The Seven College Baseball Teams You Need to Watch in 2025

It’s Valentine’s Day, and instead of being out on the town with your beloved, you’re sitting on the sofa bingewatching the latest installment of a streaming entertainment institution. Not the new season of Love is Blind; the new season of college baseball.

Baseball is like football and basketball, in that a large part of the appeal of the college game is its abundance. Not every game is worth watching, but with some 300 Division I schools to choose from, there’s a good chance that somewhere out there, there’s a close game in the bottom of the ninth, or a pitchers’ duel between top prospects, or a rivalry matchup with postseason implications. It’s borderline-impossible to remember the names of all 300 teams, much less any useful information about them. So in the interest of efficiency, here are seven schools I’ll have my eye on this season, because I think they’ll have an outsize influence on the shape of this season as a whole.

Oregon State
I’m not going to say this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a college team, ever. But it’s the most excited I’ve been for a college team without multiple contenders for the no. 1 overall pick, like the Kumar Rocker/Jack Leiter Vandy team, or Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews at LSU.

That’s because Oregon State’s 2025 schedule is the most fascinating artifact of the football-inspired conference realignment of the past few years. If you were picking schools from the old Pac-12 based on relevance for football or basketball, Oregon State would’ve been at or near the bottom. But for baseball, I don’t know that there’s a case for any other program.

The Beavers have won three national titles in the past 20 years, more than any other program in the country; all other non-SEC teams put together have five. They produced two of the past six no. 1 overall picks — Adley Rutschman and Travis Bazzana — and five other first-round picks in the past eight drafts. They are the Alabama football of the Pacific Northwest.

And yet, when the music stopped on conference realignment, Oregon State was left without a chair. With only Washington State left in the conference, Oregon State is a de facto independent.

That means one of the premier programs in college baseball is playing a barnstorming schedule, like the Ruppert Mundys of Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel. Which comes with its own challenges; in college baseball, non-conference play is usually confined to midweek games and the first three or four weekends of the year. That presents a serious problem for a team looking to find weekend dance partners in April and May. Especially considering that Corvallis is way up in a faraway corner of the country. (It’s not East Coast bias if most of the country lives out here.)

Nevertheless, Oregon State made it work. The Beavers are playing tournaments in Arizona and Texas against premier competition the first three weekends of the season. From then on, they’ve got a pretty interesting set of series, mostly against Big Ten and Big West competition — two of the stronger conferences you’ll find outside the SEC and ACC. Plus a three-way swimming meet-style event with Grand Canyon and Santa Clara.

I’m mostly interested in how the Beavs fare, because this is unprecedented. So much of the NCAA Tournament discussion centers on strength of conference; how will the committee consider a team that’s been completely decontextualized?

But also, this is a good team, full stop. I said there’s no candidate for the no. 1 overall pick here, but even after losing Bazzana, Oregon State’s infield has a couple potential Day 1 picks. There’s 6-foot-5-inch Washington transfer Aiva Arquette, who could be either Bazzana’s direct replacement at second base or an impact two-way shortstop. Then there’s third baseman Trent Caraway, who last year suffered a season-ending broken finger on a bunt attempt (never bunt!) but came back to light up the Cape. Now a draft-eligible sophomore, Caraway’s bat could carry him into the first couple rounds if he shows improvement on defense.

Texas A&M
A&M dropped a heartbreaking three-game College World Series final to Tennessee last year and got decimated by the draft. They lost top hitter Braden Montgomery (last seen as the secondary piece in the Garrett Crochet trade) and Swiss Army knife reliever Chris Cortez in the first two rounds. Then there was the weirdness with their coach.

Jim Schlossnagle built TCU into a national title contender over two decades in Fort Worth, then jumped to Texas A&M in 2021, and led the Aggies to Omaha twice in three seasons, culminating in last June’s trip to the title series. I’ll just lay out what happened next in timeline form.

• Monday, June 24: Texas fires head coach David Pierce. Texas A&M loses the final game of the College World Series. After the game, reporter Richard Zane asks Schlossnagle if he had interest in the Texas job. An awkward context for the question, but given that Texas’ athletic director had previously worked with Schlossnagle at TCU, and that Schlossnagle had been linked to the Texas job in 2016, it had to be asked. Schlossnagle scolds said reporter for asking a “selfish” question.
• Tuesday, June 25: Schlossnagle takes the Texas job.
• Wednesday, June 26: Schlossnagle apologizes at his introductory presser in Austin. Aggies fans, hardly known for their equanimity in the best of times, don’t take it well. Here’s a TexAgs column from that day, titled “Schlossnagle tops list of traitors after misleading A&M earlier this week.” The first word of the lede is “Judas.”
• Sunday, June 30: A&M announces that hitting coach Michael Earley, previously reported to be following Schlossnagle to Texas, is actually staying in College Station to become the Aggies’ head coach. Lol, j/k, sorry for the confusion.
• Wednesday, July 24: Ace left-handed pitcher Ryan Prager makes a shocking announcement that he’s coming back to campus for his junior season. The Angels, who had also drafted Cortes, took Prager in the third round, as he was just the kind of high-floor, fast-moving college prospect they seem to like. But apparently the feeling was not mutual. In the 20-round draft era, almost every player signs; Prager was the third-highest drafted prospect overall — and the only college player in the first eight rounds — who declined to go pro.

That’s more excitement in the space of a month than most programs have in a decade. More than that — and thanks in part to Prager’s return — this might be the best team in the country. D1Baseball, Baseball America, and the USA Today coaches’ poll all have A&M as the preseason no. 1-ranked team.

I’m not completely convinced, but I will say that if I had to bet now, I would put money on junior outfielder Jace LaViolette going first overall in the draft this July. LaViolette is a 6-foot-6, 230 pound monolith of an outfielder, who stands out even on a roster full of guys who look like they spend their entire NIL checks buying steaks in bulk at Costco. LaViolette has hit 50 home runs in just 132 career college games, and he could end up putting up numbers that make Charlie Condon look like Jake Mangum. No team in the country has more beef, in either sense of the word.

Virginia
When I was assembling my list of teams to write about, I made notes on various contenders. Here’s what I wrote about Virginia, in total: “Monster, monster, monster offense.”

Last year, the Cavaliers hit .333/.425/.567 as a team. Among power conference schools, they were first in runs per game and third in slugging percentage. And even tough the Cavaliers lost four position players to the draft — including first-round shortstop Griff O’Ferrall — their top four starting position players in slugging percentage are all coming back. That’s second baseman Henry Godbout, catcher Jacob Ference, outfielder Harrison Didawick, and first baseman Henry Ford.

Ford is the archetypal local kid made good, a Charlottesville native and nephew of a former UVA player, and he made an immediate impact in his first year on campus. He had 31 extra-base hits in 61 games, all starts, and in the process broke Mark Reynolds’ freshman home run record.

Virginia built a reputation for great run prevention in the 2010s; that’s slipping somewhat. Last year, they had a team ERA of 5.39, which isn’t very good even in an offense-friendly college environment. But Evan Blanco — the only Virginia starter to survive in the rotation all year — returns, as does former quarterback Jay Woolfolk, who was great in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Joining them on the staff is Chris Arroyo, who comes to UVA from Florida by way of junior college, as he seeks to make his mark not just as a left-handed pitcher but as a two-way player.

I expect this to be one of the longest lineups and one of the highest-scoring teams in the ACC, if not the entire country. And if the pitching is even decent, a third straight trip to Omaha should only be the beginning.

Indiana
Conventional wisdom seems to be that Indiana’s going to finish second or third in the Big Ten, which is what they usually do. But I’m highlighting the Hoosiers for two reasons. First, outfielder Devin Taylor is the best college prospect in the Midwest. In 114 college games, Taylor has hit .338/.441/.655 with 36 home runs; last season he walked almost as much as he struck out.

The Hoosiers usually have good athletes, but translating talent to professional performance has been a struggle. Their last first-round pick was Kyle Schwarber in 2014, from a team that also featured big leaguers Sam Travis and Scott Effross. (Another of Schwarber’s college teammates, pitcher Kyle Hart, just signed with the Padres after an impressive year in Korea.) Since then, not much. Taylor could break that streak if he plays himself into the middle of the first round.

The second reason I’m highlighting Indiana is my one hot take for the college season, my one prediction that I’m going out on a limb for and could end up making me look silly. College baseball is chaotic enough even if you don’t go looking for contrarian opinions.

With the dissolution of the Pac-12, four of that league’s refugees are headed for the Big Ten: Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington. Within the past 15 seasons, UCLA has been to the national championship series twice, winning once. The Bruins have been the no. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament within the past 10 years. Southern Cal is the most successful program in Division I history; both schools have one of the most talent-rich regions of the country in their backyard. Washington’s been to the College World Series more recently than any legacy Big Ten team except Michigan. Oregon has made the NCAA Tournament in every full season under current head coach Mark Wasikowski, and hosted a regional in three of those four years. The Ducks are the consensus best team in the Big Ten; they’re 12th in the country in the D1Baseball preseason ranking and 19th in the Baseball America ranking.

Here’s my hot take: All of these teams, except maybe Oregon, are going to get smoked in their new conference.

It’s not all about the weather, but it’s partly about the weather. USC’s first three conference road series are at Michigan, at Indiana, and at Penn State. UCLA plays at Maryland the first weekend in March. And playing up north later in the season, or avoiding the Michigan States and Minnesotas, only helps so much.

In some of these places, that beautiful temperate Midwestern summer weather doesn’t show up until after the college baseball season ends. I’ve seen a snowout in Columbus the last weekend in March, and a tornado-out in Champaign in June. Most Big Ten baseball stadiums have artificial turf fields so you can squeegee the snow off the diamond before the game. Southern California kids who wear hoodies when it’s 80 degrees out are going to have a hard time gripping the ball.

More to the point, a lot of Big Ten programs — including but not limited to Indiana — have spent the past decade building sparkling new facilities and making splashy coaching hires. Penn State, which has one NCAA Tournament appearance since 1976, almost made a regional last year. That’s how competitive things have gotten.

Of the four ex-Pac-12 teams, Oregon’s the only one that’s made any hay the past few seasons, despite rapidly weakening competition in that dying conference. It all reeks of complacency, and I think the West Coast schools are in for a tougher test than they realize.

UC Santa Barbara
In the 21st century, California’s sprawling public university system has picked up the torch where the two big Los Angeles football schools have dropped it, turning the Big West into one of the best mid-major baseball conferences out there. At one time or another, Cal State Fullerton or UC Irvine or Long Beach State has run the show, but UC Santa Barbara sits atop the pile at the moment.

Head coach Andrew Checketts is in his 14th season at the helm, and his hallmark is pitching. The Gauchos’ had their first great run a decade ago, when future no. 4 overall pick Dillon Tate led the team to its first regional hosting opportunity in 2015. The next year, after Tate went pro, UCSB made its first and so far only trip to Omaha behind ace Shane Bieber. Wonder whatever happened to him.

The Gauchos won both the regular season and tournament Big West titles in 2024, and enter 2025 with Tyler Bremner, a potential top-10 pick, leading the rotation. Bremner is a typical Checketts protégé, with a loose, low-effort delivery, good command, and multiple effective secondaries, including a wicked changeup. The bullpen, a major strength in 2024, returns sophomore left-hander Cole Tryba. The preseason All-American struck out 65 batters in 47 innings last year, getting four or more outs in 19 of his 27 appearances.

Whether the Gauchos emerge as the country’s best team outside the Power 4 conferences depends largely on the offense, which is a total question mark at the moment. The Gauchos are turning over two-thirds of their starting position player group, with no fewer than eight position player transfers joining the team for this season. Too bad they can’t make a trade with UVA.

Troy
When it comes to college baseball, I’m an unabashed SEC chauvinist. Sorry, I watch the College World Series every year, and five different SEC teams have won it all the past five years. Only three non-SEC teams have even made it to the final since 2017, and one of those — Oklahoma — just joined the conference this year.

Lurking in the footprint of the SEC is its little brother, the Sun Belt, which has its own proud history of excellence: Southern Mississippi is on a run of eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances. Coastal Carolina is the last mid-major team to win it all. And it’s getting crowded at the top. The preseason Sun Belt coaches’ poll had four teams with multiple first-place votes, with the top three separated by just five points.

So let’s talk about Troy. One of my favorite NCAA Tournament archetypes is the super annoying no. 2 seed. The regional host comes in with all the hype, maybe with some heavy draft prospects, and then it gets snookered by a non-Power 4 club that just won’t stop grinding at-bats and dropping in timely hits. Troy is my early nominee to fill that role.

Fourth-year head coach Skylar Meade is a former pitching coach at South Carolina and Michigan State. His pitching staff returns four of the top pitchers from last year in terms of innings, along with eight transfers. But the offense should drive the team. Junior catcher Brooks Bryan returns to the lineup after a monster sophomore year in which he drove in a truly astonishing 85 runs in only 58 games. Center fielder Shane Lewis was the Sun Belt Player of the Year in 2023, but had a brutal 2024, in which he hit just .176 in 32 games, but he’s expected to be back to form this year.

And then there’s newcomer Blake Cavill, a first baseman from Australia who’s had an itinerant college career: Northwest Florida State, Western Kentucky, and now Troy. You can probably guess what haircut he has. More to the point, Cavill gets on base: He walked 43 times against just 31 strikeouts in 58 games at WKU, and posted a .443 OBP. In 19 games on the Cape last year, he walked 16 more times.

The Trojans’ nonconference schedule includes games against Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi State (logically enough for a team from Alabama), plus an early-season weekend series against a tricky Penn team. Should Troy make it into the postseason, it will arrive with plenty of big-game experience.

Florida State
If I were inclined to lean into my SEC chauvinism, I’d joke that there’s yet another mid-major conference that shares the SEC’s footprint: the ACC. But I’m not so inclined, so I won’t make the joke. Still the ACC has won just one College World Series title since 1955, a stat that probably stings deepest in Tallahassee. The Seminoles spent 40 years under the tutelage of legendary head coach Mike Martin, who coached four Golden Spikes winners and numerous first-round picks, and retired as the winningest Division I college baseball coach in history. But he never won the natty.

In 2022, Florida State hired one of Martin’s former players, Link Jarrett, who’d made it to the super regional and the College World Series, respectively, in his first two tries as head coach at Notre Dame. After a rough first season with the Noles, Jarrett’s club won 49 games in 2024 and made it to the national semifinal. That’s Florida State’s best win total and furthest progression in the NCAA Tournament since 2012.

I’m generally of the opinion that in college baseball, pitching — especially pitching depth — wins championships. And the Seminoles have lots of it, starting with the weekend rotation, which will be made up entirely of left-handed pitchers from Tampa Jesuit High School, Jarrett announced this week. You might already know Jamie Arnold, a 6-foot-1 lefty with a funky low three-quarters delivery. Last year, Arnold struck out 159 batters, more than anyone in Division I apart from Chase Burns and Hagen Smith, who just happened to be the first two pitchers selected in last year’s draft. Expect Arnold to get drafted in roughly the same position.

Two of Arnold’s high school teammates, Wes Mendes and Joey Volini, transferred to FSU this offseason, and will take up the other two rotation spots. Volini is a redshirt junior who spent three years at South Florida, one of them on the bench while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Mendes, a sophomore, was a highly touted high school prospect who couldn’t put it together in his single season at Ole Miss.

The longer Florida State stays in the championship hunt, the stronger this rotation stands to get. At the start of last year, the Seminoles’ Friday night starter was not Arnold but Cam Leiter. (Yes, of the New Jersey Leiter pitching dynasty. He’s the nephew of big leaguers Al and Mark, and therefore the cousin of Jack and Mark Jr.) The latest Leiter struck out 56 batters in 35 innings before a shoulder injury felled him at the end of March, and he’s still not back into pitching shape, according to Jarrett.

But imagine if he does get healthy before the end of the season; that’d give Florida State a legitimate four-deep rotation for the NCAA Tournament, while most of their competitors are pulling freshmen and midweek relievers off the rack for high-leverage innings. We might finally find out what a national championship banner looks like in garnet and gold.