College World Series Preview, Bracket 1

As much as I love a partisan crowd in a playoff game, there’s something to be said for a tournament that has a dedicated home. Having experienced firsthand both the Men’s College World Series in Omaha and the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the cultural ecosystem that springs up around these festival sites is unlike anything else in baseball. College baseball fans know the quirks of Charles Schwab Field, they’ve walked the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge from Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa, they know the jello shot leaderboard at Rocco’s Pizza. (Whatever else happens in baseball this season, nothing will be funnier than LSU fans finding themselves in a drinking competition with Oral Roberts fans.)

I can’t recommend it enough, even to watch on TV. My pitch for a mixed college-pro baseball fandom remains: College teams are playing meaningful games while MLB teams are still in spring training, and they play high-stakes postseason games during the meaningless major league doldrums of May and June.

Yes, high stakes. You want to know what a big deal this is? Here’s University of Tennessee right-hander Chase Burns, stomping out a rally in the seventh inning of his team’s latest win over Southern Mississippi with a trip to the College World Series on the line:

M7 | CHASE BURNS IS AN ELECTRIC FACTORY!!! ????????

102 by 'em and Tennessee wiggles out of the seventh with a 4-0 lead!!#GBO // #OTH // #BeatUSM pic.twitter.com/HrRt24Lfuu

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) June 13, 2023

This guy pumped in 102-mph gas, then stomped off the mound positively convulsing with adrenaline. I have never been as excited about anything in my entire life as Burns is to spend at least a week of his summer vacation on a work trip to Nebraska. If this doesn’t get you amped up, you might actually be dead.

If you want to get on board, here is the first installment of a two-part series that delivers a brief overview of all eight contestants: Their record, how they got here, and a brief précis on a key player, as well as a bit of trivia you can pull out to impress your friends or use as an icebreaker at a bar. “Did you know the guy who forgot to tag Javier Báez that one time is now an assistant coach at Wake Forest?” You’ll be swimming in phone numbers, trust me.

Let’s get started.

Texas Christian
Record: 42-22 (13-11 Big 12; T-4th regular season, tournament champs)
Path to Omaha: No. 2 seed in Fayetteville Regional (3-0, def. Arizona, Arkansas 2x); Won Fort Worth Super Regional vs. Indiana State 2-0

No road to Omaha is easy, particularly not one that involves beating the no. 3 team in the country on the road twice. But TCU has made it look that way. They won their three games in Fayetteville by a combined score of 44-11. Then they hosted a super regional against Indiana State despite being the lower seed; the Sycamores had to give up home-field advantage because, with the Special Olympics in town, Terre Haute did not have enough hotel space to accommodate a super regional. TCU fans responded with an online charity drive that raised more than $23,000 for Special Olympics Indiana in the following few days. Heartwarming stuff.

The baseball team was less accommodating and swept the Sycamores. Between the Big 12 Tournament and the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament, TCU has trailed for just four innings over nine postseason games.

Key Number: 139

The Horned Frogs are sixth in the country with 139 stolen bases in 64 games. TCU loves to run. No other team in Omaha broke 100; only Oral Roberts and UVA even stole 70. Not only are the Frogs aggressive, they’re efficient, with an 86.9% success rate as a team. Ten different players attempted to steal more than one base this year, and all of them have an individual success rate of 80% or better, including third baseman Brayden Taylor, who was perfect in 14 attempts. (Taylor also hit 23 home runs in 63 games and slugged .657, in case anyone’s interested.)

Better Know a Player: Junior 1B Cole Fontenelle

Fontenelle is one of the hottest hitters in college baseball. He has multiple hits in his past six games, dating back to the final of the Big 12 Tournament. He’s been held hitless once in his past 11 games, May 27 against Kansas State; in that game, he walked twice, and both scored and drove in a run. That’s so hot it overshadows the three-homer, 11 RBI game Tre Richardson had against Arkansas in the regional round, which is saying something:

MOONSHOT TO STRAIGHTAWAY CENTER! ?#RoadToOmaha x ? ESPNU / @TCU_Baseball pic.twitter.com/aBKTqO43Tl

— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) June 9, 2023

Trivia: TCU has the head coach best-known to pro baseball fans: Former Astros and A’s pitcher Kirk Saarloos. After nine seasons as TCU’s pitching coach — including two trips to Omaha — Saarloos was promoted to head coach when Jim Schlossnagle left for Texas A&M after the 2021 season. Now Saarloos has TCU back in the College World Series in just his second season in charge.

Incidentally, the Horned Frogs wrapped up their super regional win over Indiana State on June 10, one day shy of the 10th anniversary of Saarloos’ participation in the Astros’ famous six-pitcher combined no-hitter in 2003.

Oral Roberts
Record: 51-12 (23-1 Summit League; regular season and tournament champs)
Path to Omaha: No. 4 seed in Stillwater Regional (3-0, def. Oklahoma State, Washington, and Dallas Baptist); Won Eugene Super Regional vs. Oregon 2-1

Last week, I mentioned that Oral Roberts had bent the curve for no. 4 seeds, and then they went out and had what would ordinarily have stood out as the wildest weekend of the super regional round. (Stay tuned for more on Texas-Stanford tomorrow.) ORU blew an 8-0 lead to lose Game 1, snapping a 21-game winning streak. The Golden Eagles then came back to walk Oregon off the next night, despite trailing 7-4 at the stretch.

An 11-6 victory in the rubber match made them the first team since Stony Brook in 2012 to win a super regional after being walked off in Game 1; Stony Brook, you might remember, is also the last no. 4 seed to make the College World Series.

Key Number: 250

Oral Roberts has the no. 250 strength of schedule in the country this season, and has played just three games against nationally seeded teams in this tournament. (All wins against Oklahoma State, two in the regular season and one in Game 1 of the regional.) Every other team in the College World Series is ranked 58th or better in strength of schedule. Whether that matters now that they’re in Omaha, I genuinely have no idea.

But the variance is high for no. 4 seeds who make it this far. It’s only happened twice: Stony Brook beat an LSU team that had Kevin Gausman, JaCoby Jones, and the Nola brothers to get to Omaha. But once there, they faced the no. 2 and no. 3 national seeds and lost both games by a combined score of 21-3. The other no. 4 seed to reach the Men’s College World Series — Fresno State in 2008 — won the whole thing. Anything is possible.

Better Know a Player: Junior RHP Cade Denton

This is true across college sports: Whenever an unfancied mid-major team makes a deep run in the NCAA Tournament, people tend to latch on to one star player and talk about him in the gleeful and frightened tones usually reserved for Omar Little. Steph Curry, Courtney Vandersloot, Shayne Gostisbehere, and so on.

It helps that Denton, a Collegiate Baseball second-team All-American and Summit League Pitcher of the Year this season, lurks out of the bullpen, ready to be sprung on opponents at any time. Denton has posted a 1.85 ERA in 58 1/3 innings across 33 appearances this season; therein, he struck out 78 batters against 11 walks while allowing just eight extra-base hits all season. And as is typical for a college relief ace, he’s more than just a one-inning closer — in his last appearance, in the Game 2 super regional win against Oregon, he picked up the win by throwing the final 3 1/3 innings, which took him 63 pitches. If ORU can continue its Cinderella run, Denton will be on the mound in the biggest moments.

Trivia: Every team in this field has its share of great baseball names, but the Golden Eagles have the field lapped. Their starting infield includes, from right to left, second baseman Blaze Brothers (.302/.376/.547, 22 SB, 1 CS), shortstop Mac McCroskey (.310/.393/.516), and third baseman Holden Breeze (.317/.404/.442).

No. 7 Virginia
Record: 50-13 (19-11 ACC; won ACC Coastal regular season, eliminated in pool play in ACC Tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 7 national seed, No. 1 seed in Charlottesville Regional (3-0, def. Army, East Carolina 2x); Won Charlottesville Super Regional vs. Duke 2-1

Virginia cakewalked through a home regional, then lost a thriller to Duke in Game 1 of the super. That game featured three lead changes and ended on a Jake Gelof fly ball that came within about three feet of being a three-run walk-off homer. (Yes, Jake Gelof is the younger brother of Zack Gelof of the Oakland A’s and the Israeli national team; the two played together on the Wahoos team that went to Omaha in 2021.) Virginia shook it off and won the next two games by double digits.

Key Number: .335

That’s Virginia’s team batting average, which was tops in the country. Virginia was also sixth in OBP, 17th in slugging percentage, and seventh in runs scored. Six Cavaliers starters hit .330/.430/.530 or better. In their super regional matchup, Duke had one hitter with a 1.000 OPS; Virginia had two players named Ethan (Anderson and O’Donnell) with a 1.000 OPS. This team can absolutely rake.

?? TONY ??

?: ESPN2 | #GoHoos pic.twitter.com/nzQeAunMM5

— Virginia Baseball (@UVABaseball) June 11, 2023

Better Know a Player: Junior C Kyle Teel

New England and the Mid-Atlantic can be a bit of a dead zone for college baseball, so when players from that region play major conference college baseball, they tend to do so for teams in Virginia and the Carolinas: Matt Harvey, Marcus Stroman, Christian Walker, Zac Gallen, the list goes on. This UVA team has six players from New Jersey and four each from Pennsylvania and New York.

Foremost among those is catcher Kyle Teel, pride of Mahwah, New Jersey. Teel hit .418/.484/.673 this season — as a catcher, it bears repeating — and threw out 37% of opposing basestealers. He’s a first-team All-American, and the first Virginia player since fellow New Jerseyan Sean Doolittle to be named ACC Player of the Year. Which is saying something, because in between Doolittle’s draft year and Teel’s, UVA has been to Omaha six times, won 50 games four times, and produced 10 first-round picks.

Teel is a lock to add to that total, because lefty-hitting catchers who can hit .400 with power in a major conference don’t exactly grow on trees.

Trivia: Does it count as trivia anymore that there’s a statue of UVA head coach Brian O’Connor outside Charles Schwab Field? Or has that fun fact been done to death? How about this: Virginia’s leader in saves this year, Jay Woolfolk, moonlights as a quarterback on the Cavaliers football team.

No. 2 Florida
Record: 50-15 (20-10 SEC; won SEC East regular season, eliminated in semifinals of SEC Tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 2 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Gainesville regional (4-1, def. Florida A&M, UConn, went 2-1 against Texas Tech); Won Gainesville Super Regional vs. South Carolina 2-0

Florida has been tested in the early rounds of the tournament, coming through the losers’ bracket in their own regional after taking a loss to Texas Tech. The Gators then endured an absolute rock fight of a super regional opener against South Carolina, a team that swept Florida in the regular season, before dominating Game 2 behind starter Hurston Waldrep to advance to Omaha.

Key Number: 286

That’s how many games Florida has played since its last College World Series appearance, which is by far the longest drought the Gators have suffered under Kevin O’Sullivan’s 16-year tenure. Since arriving in Gainesville in 2008, O’Sullivan has led the Gators to 15 regionals, the one exception being in 2020, when Florida was 16-1 and ranked no. 1 in the country when the season was canceled. They’ve been a top-four national seed nine times times, including this year, made the College World Series eight times, been a finalist twice, and won a national championship in 2017.

Four straight regionals and a trip to Omaha would be a highlight in the history of most programs; by O’Sullivan’s standards, it’s the end of a down period.

Better Know a Player: Sophomore LHP/1B Jac Caglianone

Outfielder Wyatt Langford is probably going to be a top-five pick in the draft, but we love a two-way player, don’t we? As per usual, Florida has plenty of pitching, and with Waldrep and Brandon Sproat taking the top two spots in the rotation, Caglianone hasn’t taken the mound since Game 1 of the regional, when he held Florida A&M scoreless over six innings.

Caglianone led Gators starters in ERA and held opponents to a .184 batting average, and if Florida is going to stick around Omaha, it’s going to need its entire rotation and then some. Caglianone isn’t a bad third option to have.

But Caglianone is even more exciting as a hitter. Florida has a proud recent tradition of slugging first basemen, led by Pete Alonso. And as much of a single-minded dinger-mashing machine as Alonso is, Caglianone makes him look like Doug Mientkiewicz. At 6-foot-5, 245 pounds, the sophomore star is what SEC types call (checks notes) “a hoss.” And he’s used that incredible strength to great effect; Caglianone leads all of Division I with 31 home runs in 65 games. I’ll save you the math — that’s a 77-homer pace over an MLB season. He’s also slugging .766 — I’ll say it again for the people in the back, SLUGGING SEVEN SIXTY-SIX — which is 13th in Division I overall and seventh among players from Power Five conferences. (One of the six ahead of him is Langford, his teammate.)

Your new NCAA DI home run leader!#GoGators // ? https://t.co/yfDs0JQ41S pic.twitter.com/m2RPoVMBT2

— Florida Gators Baseball (@GatorsBB) June 4, 2023

Also, Jac is neither short for John nor a cutesy Gen-Z twist on “Jack.” Caglianone’s full name is Jeffrey Alan Caglianone, so it’s an initials-based nickname, like Jeb Stuart or Gob Bluth. And I think he (or his parents, whoever’s responsible for the decision) was wise to go in that direction. Jac Caglianone is a 30-dinger name, but it’s hard to see someone named “Jeff Caglianone” breaking 20.

Trivia: I’ve got a soft spot for senior catcher BT Riopelle, who’s become a go-to postgame TV interview during Florida’s run. Not only is Riopelle quotable, he’s also clutch, albeit in an unusual way. Between the SEC Tournament and NCAA Tournament, Riopelle has played in 10 postseason games, and gone 7-for-37. But six of those hits have been home runs, including the game-winner off Gamecocks ace Will Sanders in Game 1 of the super regional. Florida is 4-0 this postseason when Riopelle homers and 4-2 when he doesn’t. Nobody’s getting more mileage out of their hits this postseason than Riopelle.

Come back tomorrow for the Bracket 2 preview…