Twins Daily College Baseball Notebook: Week 1

[Jamie Cameron]

The college baseball season kicked off last weekend. What are the storylines to watch in Week 1? How did prospective Minnesota Twins perform? Come and read up on storylines from week one.

Taps mic. ‘Time for something new’.

If you’re weary and fatigued by the incremental progress made between the Players Union and MLB during the lockout, you needn’t despair, baseball is up and running. The opening weekend of Division I college baseball is in the books. In this new, weekly feature for Twins Daily, I’ll be looking at some of the best performances, storylines, and highlights from the world of college baseball.

As the season goes on, I’ll highlight players the Twins may be interested in with the number eight overall pick in the 2022 draft. For now, the season is just up and running, so let’s dig in.

Top 25 Recap
Anticipation was high for the opening weekend of college baseball. In Starkville, Mississippi State fans were excited to welcome their defending national champion Bulldogs to the 2022 season.

Opening weekend was punctuated with several upsets as the defending champs were beaten by Long Beach State, despite an incredible performance from Mississippi St pitcher Landon Sims (more on him later). Other upsets saw Liberty beat Florida, Sam Houston beat Nebraska, and Oklahoma St beat Vanderbilt. Indeed the ‘Vandy Boys’ opening series was notable not just for the baseball, but the reaction to smartwatches being used to communicate signs to pitchers (feel free to weigh in on this in the comments).

Other strong performances from the weekend came from Arizona, who scored 35 runs in three games in an opening weekend tournament against Big 12 opposition, and Oklahoma, who beat Auburn and Michigan in the same competition, despite losing to the Wildcats.

At the end of opening weekend, here is where Baseball America has the top 25 teams nationally.

Notable Performances
North Carolina State slugger Tommy White had the most notable opening weekend. The freshman hit five home runs in his first 14 at-bats. Dominant.

Landon Sims, a right-handed pitcher out of defending NCAA champions Mississippi State, had arguably the best pitching performance of the opening weekend. He allowed just five hits and one run over seven innings of work, striking out 13 and walking none. Sims is currently ranked as the 20th overall prospect on Baseball America’s pre-draft rankings and will be a prospect to monitor this season.

Moment of the Week
This one was easy. Nick Condo out of Chapman wins the inaugural ‘Moment of the Week’ award for this outrageous ‘telescope’ after clubbing a home run. ‘Moment of the Week’ may need to be immediately retired after this opening salvo.

Potential #8 Pick Performances
Moving forward, I’ll feature the weekly performances of the top 8-12 players from the 2022 draft class, in a year Carlos Collazo thinks is a great one to be picking in the Twins position.

Right now, the top eight are comprised of Druw Jones, Temarr Johnson, Elijah Green, Brooks Lee, Jacob Berry, Jace Jung, Dylan Lesko, and Chase DeLauter (much, much more on these, and other names to come). It’s extremely early days here, and a lot will likely change before the draft. Check back next week for some updates on how these talented prospects started their seasons. For now, here’s a snippet of Druw Jones from week one.

As this is a new feature, I’d love to get readers' feedback on the content. What would you like to see incorporated into this series? What did you like? What did you not like? I’ll do my best to incorporate feedback in the coming weeks, so come and join the discussion.

 

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[Parker Hageman]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. No Will Rogers shoutout?

[SteelDodo]

Love the Potential #8 Pick Performances section. That's a GREAT idea.

[Seth Stohs]

47 minutes ago, Parker Hageman said:

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. No Will Rogers shoutout?

Big home runs in his debut weekend!! 

[Seth Stohs]

Will Rogers, #MinnesotaRepresent 

 

[Seth Stohs]

Also #MinnesotaRepresent, and #FormerTwinsDraftPickRepresent and #FormerMisterBaseballWinner Drew Gilbert hit another big homer in Tennessee. Man, he's got a sweet swing. 

 

[Parker Hageman]

Or Woodbury's Adam Mazur who had nine punchies in six for Iowa on Opening Day while chucking 97 mph darts.

(can do this all day so many minnesota contributing across the country right now it's so much fun.)

[Seth Stohs]

1 hour ago, Parker Hageman said:

Or Woodbury's Adam Mazur who had nine punchies in six for Iowa on Opening Day while chucking 97 mph darts.

(can do this all day so many minnesota contributing across the country right now it's so much fun.)

We might have to find a list or make a list of all Minnesotans at D1 schools... would be fun to keep up with them all. 

[Jamie Cameron]

1 hour ago, Seth Stohs said:

We might have to find a list or make a list of all Minnesotans at D1 schools... would be fun to keep up with them all. 

that's an awesome idea

[Seth Stohs]

I asked on Twitter and here are a bunch of names.  

Four at UNC Chapel Hill: Mac Horvath, Max Carlson, Alex Ritzer, Nick Argento (some kind of recent pipeline!)

Five at Xavier: Ethan Bosacker, Teddy Deters, Miles Halligan, Carter Hendrickson, Justin Loer

Will Rogers at ASU and Brett Bateman and UMN from Mounds View (and a bunch of the Gophers, and St. Thomas and NDSU and SDSU, I'm sure). 

Brady Posch at UN-Omaha from Sauk Rapids. 

Drew Gilbert Tennessee

Fred Garvin 

[Seth Stohs]

Appears this would be a good site to start the look... Maybe @Parker Hagemanknows a little something about it. 

https://www.prepbaseballreport.com/minnesota/commitments 

[Thiéres Rabelo]

Awesome job, @Jamie Cameron! Would love to see this BOMB by New Mexico's Cody Holtz featured in the next one! Go Lobos!