------------ in college baseball and his team has the top rated portal recruits and projected to have the top two MLB draft picks and he thinks our recruiting is better than his!!!
“Nobody has recruited better in college baseball than Arkansas, and that’s very reflective in their roster.”
If he meant what I think he said, that is a huge compliment to our program!
Yeah Lsu went out and bought them a lot of great players and their class coming in for this year is going to be about like the one we have coming in next yr… they lost about half of their 11 to MLB and we’ll probably lose about half of our 13… but we did a great job of picking up some great Juco guys that have blended in beautifully
DVH has a pipeline established Johnson doesn’t have the time under his belt to get it done yet! He will have to depend on buying some players for a while.
DVH has been doing it at the same place longer the. Johnson had been coaching.
The SEC is so loaded with talented coaches and players, it’s a wonder we don’t have four or more teams in the CWS every year. Powerful teams dot our landscape and we are adding OU and Texas. It’s a wonder the coaches can sleep at night.
Jayson Jones and Mason Neville were both big-time recruits. Whether they pan out here or elsewhere, we’ll see, but there is a lot of talent in front of both of them this year. I also think Parker Coil has the chance to be really good down the road.
I was listening to Brent Rooker speak recently about the freedom that comes with knowing you are going to play every day instead of spot starts or being a late-game replacement. I think you can apply that to the freshmen who aren’t playing much this year. Look at how much Peyton Holt’s confidence has risen since he knew he was going to play every day.
But recruiting goes beyond freshmen. One of the things that has made Arkansas so good has been its evaluation of transfers, both Division I and JUCO. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think there were a lot of schools beating down the door for players like Michael Turner, Jared Wegner and Tavian Josenberger, and those are just a few of many impact transfers the last five or six years.
I think it shows best in the overall depth of our fielding, hitting, and pitching on this team. We don’t have the best pitcher in the league but he may be the second best and, preseason, he was the second best on our staff until injuries hit us. Our second team shortstop and second basemen are making spectacular plays in the field. We don’t have the best hitters in the league but we have the best set of 1 thru 5 batters in the league and our 6 thru 9 are contributing better now despite their overall lowish averages. Even though we lost our bullpen ace early, the depth behind him has had flashes of competence enough that we finished tied for first. If Tygart can add a few more innings as he returns from his injury, we could be even stronger there. In a business like way, we just seem to be peaking and overcoming a lot of our injuries at the perfect time for the post season. The coaches and commentators in the SEC are seeing it happen and pointing it out. I kind of agree with them.