Last week, I advocated for adding UC Irvine to your college baseball futures portfolio. The veteran Anteaters can still be found in the 60/1 range ahead of Selection Monday.
Dallas Baptist, another plucky underdog, is being priced the same way. The Patriots have a dominant ace in 6-foot-6 Ryan Johnson. The imposing righty is mowing down 13.45 hitters per nine innings, making him one of the most prolific strikeout artists in the country.
While it’s nice to have a few dark horses on your dance card, the reality is that the cream generally rises to the top.
Six of the past seven national champions were ranked in the top 15 heading into the postseason.
So to balance my two underdog selections, I’m grabbing a true baseball blue blood to win it all — Georgia at 25/1 (DraftKings).
The Dawgs have handled the SEC grind, winning 17 of 30 conference games, while establishing a formidable home-field advantage (29-5). That should help them avoid any landmines as they host a regional in Athens next weekend.
Their dynamic lineup is top five in both on-base percentage and slugging. They have gotten better as the season has gone on, and that applies to their ace Kolten Smith as well.
Smith has shown flashes of brilliance in the past two months. In three of his last seven starts, he’s hit double-digit strikeouts, including 11 in a road win at Texas A&M.
Finally, a stat that I consider to be gold-plated in the world of college baseball — road RPI — is squarely in the Dawgs’ favor. They are third in that department, which essentially means they won’t blink if they have to win a Super Regional away from home.
This is Wes Johnson’s first year as the manager at Georgia, but his fingerprints are all over this club, particularly the pitching staff.
As a journeyman pitching coach, Johnson broke through in the mid-2010s with Dallas Baptist, Mississippi State and Arkansas. He was a bit of an advanced stat pioneer and impressed enough people to get an extremely rare offer.
The Minnesota Twins plucked him directly from the college ranks and made him their pitching coach. It was a move that helped the floundering Twins tremendously and supercharged Johnson’s career.
When he arrived, the Twins were coming off a losing campaign in which their staff was routinely shelled (22nd in team ERA). In Year 1 under Johnson, the staff ERA improved to ninth and then fourth the following season.
Johnson appears to be working his magic with Smith at the top of his rotation. The sophomore’s low expected FIP indicates that his performance on the bump is better than his ERA would lead you to believe.
He has a deep repertoire of pitches, using his cutter, slider, fastball, changeup and 12-6 curveball to great effect. He is the kind of ace you want to hitch your wagon to in Omaha.
And if a rising star like Smith isn’t enough to convince you, the Dawgs also have the SEC Player of the Year in Charlie Condon.
The redshirt sophomore is as intimidating a hitter as any we’ve seen in many years in the college game. He’s batting .443 with a Division I-leading 35 home runs.
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That’s the most in the regular season since 2012, when the NCAA switched to BBCOR bats for safety reasons (reduced exit velocities).
My only hang-up here is Georgia’s relievers. As Marc Weiszer, a Georgia baseball beat writer, recently said on SportsTalk with Bobby Hebert, “The [UGA] bullpen looked like a glaring weakness this past weekend against Florida.”
If Johnson can fix his bullpen, namely closer Brian Zeldin, this team has it all to make a deep run in Omaha.
BET: Georgia to win College World Series (25/1, DraftKings)