The Bruins coaching staff welcomed the nation’s No. 3 ranked recruiting class (as ranked by Baseball America) to Westwood this fall and will look for those players to make an immediate impact in 2016. The freshman class features five pitchers, one first baseman, two infielders and two outfielders.
UCLA also returns a strong group of veterans this season, including six position player starters from last year’s team. The Bruins are coming off one of their best seasons in program history, recording a school-record 22 conference wins en route to the Pac-12 Championship and the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The Diamond Dawgs
are coming off the
most impressive
summer in school
history, having won
Program Award from
the National Alliance
of College Summer Baseball. State’s 13 hitters on the 2016 roster combined to hit .316 in 438 total games, going 463 for 1464 with 241 RBIs, 86 doubles, 13 triples and 31 home runs. On the mound, MSU’s returning pitchers recorded a 2.13 ERA in 292 innings with 251 strikeouts and a 1.15 WHIP.
Head coach John Cohen’s pitching staff is led by preseason All-American right-hander Dakota Hudson, who ranked fifth in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League in both strikeouts (41) and ERA (1.69). As a result, the 2016 team captain was placed on the CCBL Year-End All-League Team and was named a top-40 college prospect for the 2016 Major League Baseball Draft by Perfect Game (No. 13), D1Baseball (No. 15), Baseball America (No. 20) and MLB.com (No. 33). The Dunlap, Tennessee, native was one of 21 pitchers on the spring roster who touched 90 mph on the radar gun in scrimmages this past fall.
Joining Hudson as part of the school-record eight Bulldogs who played in the CCBL this past summer was fellow team captain Jacob Robson. The junior outfielder started the 2015 CCBL All-Star Game and finished the CCBL regular season with a .318 batting average. Robson finished in the top-10 in the Southeastern Conference last spring in stolen bases (21) and on-base percentage (.436), while leading the team in batting average (.324), runs scored (41), hits (60), at-bats (185) and multi-hit games (18).
Defensively, the Bulldogs are anchored by middle infielders John Holland and Ryan Gridley. This past spring, Holland shattered the school record for the highest fielding percentage by a second baseman, posting a .992 clip with just two errors in 256 chances. Gridley earned All-SEC Freshman honors at shortstop, and along with Holland helped MSU maintain its lead with the most double plays turned nationally since 2012 (264). The last two seasons, head coach John Cohen’s club has tallied the fourth-highest combined fielding percentage in the country (.979).
21
#11
Courtesy of hailstate.com
MISSISSIPPI
STATE