To all you fans of college baseball, Happy Super Regionals Weekend and Happy College World Series Eve.
Some fan bases are taking unexpected vacations to Regional sites this weekend — take a bow, Murray State and UTSA — and some made their reservations to Omaha as early as last summer. We see you, LSU. (And we don’t blame you. Back when West Monroe’s football Rebels were going to the Superdome with regularity, my own personal mother and little sister, before the season’s first pass had been completed, had made December reservations for New Orleans. Good times.)
The payroll for the LSU baseball team is likely more than the combined payrolls of all the other Louisiana college baseball teams. I do not have all the numbers, but I have some. The payroll for the LSU
pitching
staff is likely more than the combined payrolls of all the other Louisiana college baseball teams.
It’s a different world. Not better or worse than before, just different. Everyone has an opinion on this many-sided question.
And still, baseball is the college sport where the mid-major has the best chance of playing with the Big Schools. In a short series, and especially with “the right guy on That Day” on the mound, anything can happen.
Thirteen SEC schools made the tournament and only four remain, partly because some SEC schools were chosen over mid-majors who were looked over because they were mid-majors, and partly because of the “anything can happen” rule of sports.
Probably, Murray State can’t compete with Ole Miss for 50 games, but they can for a short series. Same with UTSA, a team that swept the Texas Regional and a program that Louisiana Tech fans know fairly well; it’s a feisty bunch, always, in any sport.
Here I could (and will) take a shot at why Tech, a program that earned its way to three Regionals in the past four years and was Conference USA’s defending regular season champ, finished 32-25, one-half game out of fourth place and out of the serious money this year. I saw all the games. Every pitch. Have the numbers in front of me and all that. But first …
Tech has now been to three Regionals in five years. Hard to do.
In CUSA, 2025 Dallas Baptist has been to 11 straight NCAA Regionals. That program is the CUSA standard. The Patriots’ baseball program benefits greatly in that the school does not have a football investment. The school’s teams are baseball, men’s basketball, and Olympic sports. Nothing wrong with that; just more money for baseball.
This season Western Kentucky finished second in the regular season and made its first Regional since 2009.
Kennesaw State finished 32-24 in the Atlantic Sun last year and in third place in its first CUSA season, three games ahead of Tech, at 31-27, 17-9 in the league.
Fourth-place Jacksonville State was the third most-improved program in the country this year.
And concerning some names already mentioned in the 2025 Regionals, Missouri Valley Conference champ Murray State, 39-13, earned its first Regional since 2003, and UTSA, 3-0 against No. 2 Texas this season and 47-13 overall, earned its first since 2013.
Good for them. Might be lightning in a bottle, might be the next step in building a for-real program. Keep a baseball eye on what happens in Murray, San Antonio, Kennesaw, Bowling Green, and Jacksonville next spring. It’s hard to stay within reaching distance of the top, much less at the top.
A long look over the shoulder and a study of my scorebooks and a scratch of the head points to Tech not being able to get started this year. By that, we mean starting pitching figured to be the team’s strong suit. It wasn’t.
Last year when the Dogs, 45-19, won the league with an 18-6 record, the number of starts for their three weekend starters (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) were 16, 17,13. No one else had as many as five starts. Tech knew who it was running out there, and about what it would get.
This year, whether from sore arms or bad seasons or bad luck, the three arms that figured to start weekends got 8, 6, and 13 starts. The Dogs were cobbling games together almost right out of the chute. A pair of first-year players combined for an improvised 19 starts.
Here are the comparable numbers for the rest of the league.
DBU: 14, 14, 12
Kennesaw State: 13, 15, 10
WKU: 14, 10, 10
Jax State: 15, 16, two pitchers with 9 starts each
FIU: 14, 12, 12
New Mexico State (finished seventh): 10, three with 7 starts each
Liberty (finished eighth): 17, 15, 8. (That’s not bad. At all. And the Flames led the league in fielding and were second in ERA. But, Liberty couldn’t hit water if it fell out of a boat. Finished last in batting average, eighth out of 10 in runs scored.
The Bulldogs were just above the middle in all other pitching categories. Third in runs scored, which is the name of the game, fourth in runs allowed and ERA, which is the other name of the game.
But starts were more often than not a jump ball. And still, Tech was in the thick of things until back-to-back road trips to Western Kentucky and Jax State in May.
Each year, baseball ultimately comes down to doing what you can with what you have as the season rolls along. This year, Tech didn’t have whatever intangible it needed to overcome a starting staff that never panned out.
Three of the past five seasons, they had whatever it took to give themselves a fightin’ man’s chance in postseason. Tip of the cap for that. Considering the razor thin margin separating wins from losses these days, such a look in the rearview mirror should have Dog fans panting for spring and a new shot at The Next Step.
It starts with starts.
Contact Teddy at
[email protected]
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