2024 college baseball/softball thread

A note from a couple of weeks ago. USC baseball announced that because of renovations at Dedeaux Field, the Trojans will play all of their home games at The Great Park in Irvine. Free admission. This is probably 40 miles from campus, but it is in Orange County, which is Trojan Country. And, it is five minutes from my house. As the Daily Trojan baseball beat guy in the Roy Smalley-Fred Lynn-Rich Dauer-Steve Kemp era, I might go to some of them.

 

Dedeaux should be all nice and spiffy for that big series against Rutgers next season.

Has any once-prominent program dropped further than USC? They have been terrible since 2005.

 

I think I read somewhere that they are going to convert Dedeaux Field into the swim stadium for the '28 Olympics, then revert to the baseball field afterward. Trojans might be road warriors again for a season.

Regardless, USC has been terrible and had some bad luck, too. Seriously bad coaching decisions, such as getting rid of Mike Gillespie and hiring Chad Kreuter. Kreuter was Gillespie's son-in-law but he badmouthed his wife's dad to recruits. He also was a horrible recruiter. The son of a friend of mine wanted to go to USC, but Kreuter strung him along then stopped taking his phone calls. So the kid went to UCLA instead and became an all-league player on the Bruins national championship team. He was teammates with Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer. But there was one year when the Trojans got signed letters-of-intent from three high school players who, a couple of months later, were all first-round draft picks. All three went pro for first-round money. I think the guy they have now, Andy Stankiewicz, is really good. Hope the program recovers.

 

If they get good again, they've got a chance, because the Big Ten is horrible. Their RPI is going to sink like a stone in 2025, though, with so many bad league games.

I'll be interested to see how the local UC and CSU schools use the Big Ten against SC and UCLA in recruiting. Unlike football or basketball, there are plenty of local options for an outstanding SoCal baseball recruit besides USC and UCLA who won't be going halfway across the country for league games.

 

The schools lost one recruit from this area because of the conference change for that reason.

No one is slumming playing in the Big West though. Should be a very interesting opening weekend series between UC San Diego, last year's champ but ineligible for postseason while transitioning to D1, and MW regular season and tournament champ San Jose State.

 

That's exactly my point. Going forward, after a couple seasons and the real impact is known, a great SoCal prep can perhaps have a better experience at Fullerton, Irvine or Santa Barbara or Northridge than at UCLA or USC, where he'll be flying halfway or completely across the country at least 4-5 times every spring, and playing his conference tournament in Nebraska, Minnesota or Iowa. His/her (softball, volleyball) parents will sure have an easier time attending road games.

 

Don't have the link handy, but the recruit also cited the expense to the parental units, flying to Ann Arbor, Columbus, ect., vs., say, Pullman or Tucson. Big West? Biggest flight is to Hawaii every other year.

 

Hats off, my man. Hats off.

 

You can't make this shit up.

Sacramento State's Matt Masciangelo hit by pitch 7 times in 8 at-bats to open NCAA season

 

Dude took them like a champ, saying none of them were malicious. Watching the montage, it seems like they were trying to throw inside on him and kept winging him. Almost all of the HBPs look like breaking balls.

 

I guess in college they don't have to try to get out of the way. Only one of those was way inside. All of the others, he could have easily gotten out of the way.

BTW, I covered LMU back in the day when Dave Snow was the coach. It was no secret if an LMU batter was hit by a pitch, he earned a six-pack of beer. If he was hit with the bases loaded, he earned a case of beer.

 

8 plate appearances. HBPs do not count as at-bats. Carry on.

EDIT: Dig at the headline writer, not the poster.