re: LSU Comes in at #2 in D1 Baseball preseason rankings.

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Curiel would’ve started anywhere in arky’s outfield, but since we’re talking LF, most arky fans probably would’ve taken Curiel over Davalan considering one crumble under pressure while the other thrived. And Eyanson would’ve been the ace of arky staff so it’s not a maybe he had better numbers than root across the board.

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Agree on Eyanson. And if we want to move players around (to Sammy's point), then Curiel was better than their CF. But (and this is key) on paper, the only position player in our lineup better than their respective Arky counterpart was Jared at 1B.

That was the best Arky team in their history and we dusted them off 4 of 5 because we peaked with they face-planted and we were clutch when they choked. Those things don't always show up in box scores and stats.

So at this point, it doesn't bother me that UCLA is "better" than us on paper. Come post-season, we just need to peak.

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Led by 2025 D1Baseball Player of the Year Roch Cholowsky, the Bruins return eight everyday regulars and 10 of their top 12 innings leaders on the mound from a team that won 48 games and reached the College World Series last year

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This is impressive sounding, but UCLA was not very good last year, in spite of making the CWS.

they added a god transfer pitcher and a freshmen but i don’t think they had a single pitcher in the CWS that would habe started more than 1-2 SEc teams.

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but i don’t think they had a single pitcher in the CWS that would habe started more than 1-2 SEc teams.

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All three of their weekend arms would have been welcome nearly everywhere in the SEC as Sunday guys. The issue is that they weren't really better than SEC Sunday guys.

But with the addition of Reddeman and Cervantes (who D1 lists as the Saturday guy as a freshman), those guys roles change significantly. All three weekend starters are back. And yes, all of them had fewer Ks than innings pitched, but only one of them was egregiously low. Two of them would have had more Ks than innings with just one more K per appearance.

Preseason rankings are nice but I'd rather be the Last flag full mast in Omaha.

Preseason rankings themselves are just meant for clicks. Why not spice it up to get even more attention. D1’s only useful “rankings” come in when it’s time for seeding. They generally have a good idea who is in/out and where they’ll go/host.

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yeah those were the arms i talked about adding, and maybe they just had a bad weekend in Omaha, but they threw like 20 guys in the games against us and arkansas and gave up 16 runs.

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That was their strategy all year because they didn't have a true ace. So it was short starts and heavy bullpen usage. They just ran out of gas at the end of the season. The reason the addition of the two new pitchers is important (and they added other freshmen that could contribute too), is that those two guys slot in right at the top. You also have another year of development for guys that were already good. So they're conceivably getting better while simultaneously being asked to do less.