Five Thoughts on the College World Series
1. The Wildcats bashed their way to the College World Series win. Arizona went 10-0 during the World Series and put on an impressive hitting display leading in seven offensive categories. The team led in batting average, on-base percentage, runs scored, hits, RBI’s, triples and total bases.
They had 81 RBI’s with the next closest team being Florida State with 66. Their 178 total bases were 24 more than the second place team, Stony Brook.
The team is well equipped to make another run to the title next year as they only lose one senior from the team (Bobby Brown).
2. Stony Brook made a Cinderella run to the World Series. The small school from Long Island went 6-4 during the tournament. The America East representative has only been playing Division 1 baseball for 12 years. They have had only one player make it to the pros and that is Texas Rangers closer Joe Nathan. Their signature win was eliminating LSU in Baton Rouge.
The deep run they went on should help recruiting going forward as they also had two players drafted in the MLB First-Year Players Draft. Catcher Pat Cantwell was drafted in the third round by the Texas Rangers and pitcher Tyler Johnson went in the 33rd round to the Oakland A’s.
3. Stanford had a very disappointing end to their season. The Cardinal were crushed by Florida State by scores of 17-1 and 18-7 in the Tallahassee Super Regional. Stanford ace Mark Appel took the loss in the 17-1 game going four innings giving up five earned runs. His loss came four days after being drafted eighth overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the MLB draft.
4. The Pac-12 and SEC dominated the World Series. The two conferences sent 13 teams into the tournament with five making it into the final ten (Arizona, UCLA, Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina). All the teams combined for 57 wins against 24 losses.
5. The College World Series began in 1947 with California beating Yale for the National Championship. Since that time, 24 teams have won the championship and the Pac-12 has six of those teams. USC (12), Arizona State (5), Arizona (4), California (2), Oregon State (2) and Stanford (2) have combined for 27 titles during that time period.
You do have to take into account that the league wasn’t always the Pac-12 but you can still see how elite the teams out west have been.
The scary part is the Pac-12 as we know it now finished as the runner-up 14 times. ASU lost in the final game five times, the Wildcats and Cardinal lost three times each, USC lost twice and the Bears fell once as well.
Check out Raymond Mencke’s blog at www.sportissue.com. Also follow him on Twitter @RaymondMenckeJr,
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