College World Series 2017: Breaking down the strengths of the 8 remaining teams

The 2017 College World Series commences in Omaha Saturday, with eight teams divided into two four-team brackets for a slate of double elimination mini-tournaments transpiring across the following week.

Five of the original eight national seeds are still standing after the regional and super regional rounds, a group that doesn’t include No. 2 North Carolina, which was upended by Davidson in the Chapel Hill regional tilt.

The two teams to survive the first round in Omaha will play a best-of-three series next weekend. Last year’s finalists, Arizona and Coastal Carolina — the latter of which failed to make this year’s tournament after winning it all in 2016 — required all three games to decide the winner, and Game 3 had to be postponed to a midday Thursday affair because dangerous weather ripped through northeastern Nebraska on the originally scheduled Wednesday night.

In many respects, college baseball media coverage has yet to provide consistent, adroit analysis over the span of an entire season, but D1Baseball has made great strides in treating the sport in a systematic, general way. All eight of this year’s CWS teams, in fact, ranked in D1B’s preseason top 25, the lowest being Cal State Fullerton at No. 20. Kendall Rogers and Aaron Fitt are must-follows on Twitter, especially come tournament time.

Let’s get a sense of each CWS team’s strengths and personalities, then.

West Coast teams typically play tournament-friendly baseball, what with their commitment to small-ball hitting, aggressive base-running, and lockdown defense. Tournament ball means tooling around with lineups and pitching assignments, and a team’s ability to adapt on the fly suits those that can do it all.

In this respect, then, the Beavers are primed to make the CWS’ final weekend, since they enjoy the everyday bats of Steven Kwan and Nick Madrigal and a .412 slugging percentage. Oregon State won’t outscore you to death (they averaged just 6.1 runs per game this year), but the club also won’t be giving up many runs in the pitcher-friendly TD Ameritrade Stadium in Omaha, which, with winds blowing in from direct center, always plays bigger than teams’ home ballparks. Oregon State can indeed manufacture runs and build up scoring flurries with the best of the field.

Oregon State here holds the added advantage of a stellar pitching staff, even without Friday ace Luke Heimlich, who announced Thursday that he would not be traveling with the team to Omaha, so as not to “create further distraction” for the team on its title attempt. In the lead-up to the Beavers’ Corvallis super regional, The Oregonian discovered that Heimlich was a registered sex offender, having been convicted of molesting a younger family member when he was 15 years old.

Without Heimlich’s 0.79 ERA, the Beavers seemed to suffer not at all, since they haven’t lost a game in the tournament and are currently on a winning streak dating back to April 29. In the Beavers’ most recent game — a 9-2 shellacking of Vanderbilt to advance to the CWS — sometime starter Bryce Fehmel held the Commodores to just five hits in a complete game effort. As a staff, Oregon State’s starting hurlers own a 1.80 ERA on the season, the lowest in the country in some 40 years.

Alongside Fehmel, Jake Thompson’s 1.52 ERA and righty Drew Rasmussen can consistently reach into the mid-to-low 90s with their heat. Teams typically rotate between two starters every other game at this point in the tournament, so with three top arms ready to go, the Beavs have an embarrassment of starting stuff.

Speaking of pitching rotations, LSU is probably the one team from this side of the bracket that could push Oregon State to the brink. Starters Alex Lange from the right and Jared Poche from the left form a commanding tandem, and their experience — they both threw in Omaha two years again — will certainly be welcome as the Tigers work their way through the week. Closers Zack Hess and Hunter Newman are capable mop-up men, with Newman owning just a 1.07 ERA.

Where LSU can really give Oregon State a run for its money is at the plate. As Aaron Fitt points out, the Tigers have scored nine or more runs 10 times over the course of their current 16-game winning streak. LSU exploded in the Baton Rouge super regional’s clincher, scoring 14 runs over a solid Mississippi State squad. Lightning rod Greg Deichmann has had an incredible year, knocking 19 home runs for a .606 slugging percentage.

Back in Omaha for the first time since 2012, FSU is currently averaging 7.4 runs per game, the highest scoring rate in the remaining tournament field. The ‘Noles are particularly troublesome to pitch against, since their lineup has four switch-hitters, including power man Jackson Lueck, who knocked in the walk-off RBI that won the Tallahassee super regional. The ‘Noles aren’t the most powerful hitting team out there by any stretch, but they’re patient and lead the nation in walks with 380 on the season. They will get on base.

With a 1.50 ERA in its last 13 outings, FSU’s pitching staff is a force of nature. Tyler Holton and freshman lefty Drew Parrish are absolute terrors on the hill, and a deep bullpen — led by onetime starter Drew Carlton — will serve them well when the dogfights begin. One thing to keep an eye on with Carlton, however, will be how he manages when putting runners on base, since he’s given up 62 hits in 59 innings of work this year.

These Titans are certainly the wildcard in this half of the bracket. Fullerton last played in Omaha in 2015, and this year the Titans overcame a 1-0 deficit against Long Beach State in the super regional round to earn their spot in the group of eight. They’ve won this tournament four times, most recently in 2004, and the Titans are looking for their first title under sixth-year skipper Rick Vanderhook.

Fullerton’s lineup can manufacture runs, with stalwart first baseman Dillon Persinger leading the way. He’s batting .297 and has 18 stolen bases this year, and along with All-American Scott Hurst’s 12 home runs, it’s somewhat surprising that Fullerton’s 5.5 runs per game ranks them the lowest scoring team in the tournament field.

The Titans pitching rotation sports an excellent trio of strong arms, led by Colton Eastman, who missed a significant stretch of the season with an injury. He’s back and healthy, though, winning both of his starts in the regional and super regional rounds, and he’s backed up by John Gavin and Connor Seabold, a daunting platoon of talent who could pitch the Titans into the winners bracket.

Pitching is the backbone of Kevin O’Sullivan’s outfit this year, and from starter Alex Faedo to closer Michael Byrne, these Gators can throw themselves out of virtually every situation they find themselves in. Faedo was drafted by the Detroit Tigers earlier in the week, and it’ll be surprising if he doesn’t get the ball in Florida’s opener against No. 6 TCU.

The Gators don’t necessarily need to score a truckload of runs to beat a team like, say, Louisville, and that can play as an advantage in long-ranging Omaha. In fact, the Gators hadn’t won a game on a walk-off this season until the first game of their super regional tilt against Wake Forest. The lineup does feature hitters, though, most notably catcher JJ Schwarz, who has three homers in the tournament so far.

The Horned Frogs capped 2017 by earning a CWS bid for the fourth straight year, a testament to skipper Jim Schlossnagle’s ability to get his teams ready for postseason play. TCU handled upstart Missouri State in the Fort Worth super and went undefeated through the regionals as well. Though without the services of last year’s bomber, Luken Baker, due to an arm injury, the Frogs can still pound the ball. Catcher Evan Skoug has blazed through the tournament, blasting four homers in five games before Omaha.

Starter Jared Janczak and bridge relief man Sean Wymer headline a pitching staff that owns a 3.99 ERA on the season. Janczak dealt with a shoulder injury earlier in the season, but he’s put on fine form here in June, sporting a 1.82 ERA.

Brendan McKay may be college baseball’s most complete player, with the ability to pitch and hit well. His tools are complemented by the hard-hitting Drew Ellis, who bats immediately after McKay in the order — a deadly duo to have to deal with so early in the Cards’ lineup.

McKay’s arm and bat tandem earned him the John Olerud award this year, given to the best two-way player in the country. He’s recorded 385 strikeouts in his career, a program record, and this year knocked out 17 home runs, and if a pitcher tries to work around him, Ellis is there waiting just behind.

The Aggies are the wildcard of this half of the bracket, having entered the regional round as a three-seed in the Houston regional. A&M then beat all three teams in the regional — Baylor, Iowa, and the hosts — then hosted a significantly overwhelmed Davidson club to advance to the CWS for the first time since 2011. This is the Aggies’ sixth appearance in Omaha.

Freshman Braden Shewmake leads A&M’s powerful lineup with a .335 batting average and 68 RBIs, which is more than twice as many as the next hitter on the roster. He’s only a freshman.

If there’s an Achilles’ heel here, it’s the Aggies defense, which has been at times a liability to an otherwise sound ball club in other departments. A&M had a few costly errors in the super regionals opener, which allowed Davidson to get on top of them in the early going.

As for the pitching staff, it appears that big-time ace, Brigham Hill, has been moved into the bullpen in favor of Corbin Martin. But that shouldn’t trouble Aggie fans, since Martin is more than capable of eating innings and holding the score down. Closer Cason Sherrod can touch into the 90s with his fastball, as can right-hander Mitchell Kilkenny.

This Louisville-Texas A&M opening matchup is probably the most intriguing of the CWS opening round.