Kirby Jones leads the highly regarded UVA baseball team in 2015. Photo via unk
Believe it or not, its time to start thinking about College Baseball again. Most teams’ schedules start on the 2/13/15 weekend and all the major outlets covering the sport have released pre-season rankings lists.
College pre-season top-25 lists with local interests noted:
- Baseball America. Defending champ Vanderbilt #1, UVA #4, Maryland #16, and Liberty #25.
- USA Today Coaches poll pre-season top 25: Vandy #1, UVA #2, Maryland #20
- Collegiate Baseball’s pre-season top 25: Vandy #1, UVA #3, Liberty #23, Maryland #37
- D1 Baseball.com’s pre-season top 25: Vandy #1, UVA #3, Maryland #14.
This BA link has capsules to all the top 25 teams. And BA has released their pre-season All-American list, with local players of note Nathan Kirby and Mike Matuella (Duke’s #1 starter hailing from Great Falls) earning first team honors. This pre-season All-American list comes from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and is littered with UVA players.
Vanderbilt returns its entire weekend rotation, including two lock 1st round picks in Walker Buehler and Carson Fuller as well as another presumed 1st round pick in shortstop Dansby Swanson and is inarguably the best returning team in the land. UVA’s Joe McCarthy earned pre-season 2nd team honors but just went down with injury (back injury, out 12 weeks ugh), which seems like its going to really hurt that team.
Interesting development for 2015: d1baseball.com has apparently been acquired, or has undergone a mass change in direction. Gone is the 1990-esque interface; now they have graphics and professional writers associated with it (namely, Aaron Fitt, formerly of Baseball America, who left BA in Nov 2014 and is now focused entirely on the d1 site. Most importantly, the site is now a pay-for site. I visit this site constantly during the college and CWS seasons; we’ll see how much you can see w/o paying for this season.
2/10/15 post publish update: Great preview of College season from Chris Slade at minorleagueball.com