Baseball America has put out their 2008 Freshmen All-American teams led by Chris Hernandez of Miami (FL) who was named BA National Player of the Year award winner. The full team is available below. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Monday Baseball America comes out with their weekend review. Aaron Fitt ended up attending the San Diego Tournament which featured some of the best pitching matchups of the season. The full article available here.

The three strikes segment focuses on the Shooter-Hunter matchup in Minnesota, Texas A&M bats warming up, and some more thoughts on the USD tourney. The full article is available here.

John Manuel sat down for a chat session to discuss BA Top 25. The full chat transcript is available here. Baseball America’s Top 25 is available here.

Baseball America has put out their Preseason All-American list lead by Justin Smoak (South Carolina) and Pedro Alvarez (Vanderbilt). Both players are expected to become top 5 picks in the 2008 MLB Draft in the springtime. Miami first baseman Yonder Alonso was the other corner infielder on the team leaving Brett Wallace (Arizona State) off the squad. The middle infielders are Gordon Beckham (UGA) and Jemile Weeks (Miami FL). The outfielders are teammates Kyle Russell and Jordan Danks of Texas. The team is filled out by Dennis Raben of Miami (FL). The biggest snub on the team is Dominic De La Osa (Vanderbilt). The pitching for the squad is led by Aaron Crow of Missouri after an unbelievable summer in the CCBL. The other pitchers are Christian Friedich of Eastern Kentucky, Brett Hunter of Pepperdine, Brian Matusz of San Diego, and Ryan Perry of Arizona. How is Jacob Thompson (UVA) left off the team? He has had two outstanding seasons in a very competitive ACC. Zach Putnam of Michigan is listed as the utility man after a strong NCAA tourney last season.

Full Release
All-American teams can be viewed here.

Baseball America has released their preseason top 25 list.  The full ranking is available here.

Leading the way are the UCLA Bruins in the top spot.  Arizona, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and North Carolina landed in spots 2 through 5, while Missouri, Oregon State, Michigan, ASU and Miami rounded out the top 10.

We check in with Aaron Fitt over at B.A. tonight with a chat and a key piece of news out of the NCAA meetings in Nashville.

Aaron hosted his first chat of the year. Among the various topics discussed are the top five college prospects in the 2008 MLB draft: Pedro Alvarez of Vanderbilt, Aaron Crow of Missouri, Brian Matusz of San Diego, Justin Smoak of South Carolina and Brett Hunter of Pepperdine. Aaron says Alvarez is the class of the draft, featuring the top tools in the game. Aaron also discusses Texas’ reloading and the top three in the SEC (Ole Miss, South Carolina and Vanderbilt), among other issues.

Aaron also gives a recap of the failure of attempts to override the drastic revamp of many rules in NCAA baseball in a Blog Entry found here.

Baseball America writers Aaron Fitt and John Manuel put out an article ranking the top programs in the BCS conferences while including traditional baseball power conferences in C-USA and the Big West. The article ranks programs with a letter grade from an A for excellent to an F for failing. Some of the schools that received the A standard were Miami, FSU, Stanford to name some. Duke and Pacific are among a few schools that received an F for a grade. The full article is available in PDF format by clicking here.

Baseball America published an interesting op-ed piece today, forecasting their predicted field for the 2008 College World Series. Obviously it’s too soon to tell who will be a legitimate contender, with almost 2 months remaining before the August 15 deadline for MLB organizations to sign would-be college prospects, and injuries, weather and dozens of other factors looming on the horizon. But all the same, it’s interesting to start thinking about it already as we watch the summer leagues take shape, and Aaron Fitt provides some interesting food for thought in the off-season. And no, as you near the end of the list, you’ll discover that I am not unbiased in my evaluation of this article…

The lucky 8:

Arizona State
Miami

Baylor

Michigan

Missouri

UCLA

Vanderbilt

Virginia

Full Article

Baseball America had a chat today about the upcoming season. They address many different topics including the ACC with some discussion about Andrew Brackman and Virginia’s pitching among other topics. It is a pretty lengthy chat with Aaron Fitt and can be read here.

Baseball America has released a Pre-Season Top 50 for the upcoming season. The article is in PDF format and can be read here.

Since there is very little news coming out of the College Baseball World, I thought I would drop some links for your guys to enjoy from PGCrossChecker.com. They have posted a very nice article about the 2007 Recruiting Classes. I also have found a link to an article from them about the top 100 prospects from the CCBL from this past summer. I think the ratings are little off since I did not see the CCBL Co-Pitcher of the Year in the Top 100 in Terry Doyle (maybe I missed his name). I have also linked the Baseball America Top 30 from the CCBL also.

Top Recruiting Classes
CCBL Prospects for 2007 Draft from Perfect Game
2007 Draft Candidates from Baseball America

I am currently working on a season preview that should be ready in January so look forward to that.

The Baylor Bears recruiting class has been rated number 1 in the nation by Baseball America. The reason for this is that the 2005 CWS run gave the program some national exposure and positive press. The Baylor staff was fighting to get rid of the stigma from the basketball tragedy in 2003. It looks like they have overcame the challenge.

There are also some news and notes in tea article about UNC reloading and Oregon State shuffling up their rotation for next year.

Full article available here.