No excuse not to win ACC with all this draftable talent. (tic) A counterpoint is below.
We may have a lot of draftable players but as we have seen, what matters is on the field. We are going to score a lot of runs. But will our pitching and D be good enough to keep us in with the elite teams? Elite teams have elite pitching and we have seen that elite pitching can shut down elite offenses in the NCAAs. Look at Vandy's power loss last year. Many other examples.
Here's my main point for the morning.
Preseason ranking has become even less certain with transfers. Duh.
D1 Baseball recently ranked the incoming "Newcomer" players for the season to include transfers. Not reassuring at all for GT. Given we have so much perceived talent, it may have been hard to improve with transfers. Chandler is the only guy projected to start who transferred in. We are going to need to fill a lot of holes with next year's class and transfers, so we'll need to do better in the transfer area next year. But that is next year.
https://d1baseball.com/recruiting/2021-22-newcomer-breakdowns-recruiting-classes-1-5/
Anyway, D1 Baseball Newcomer ranking is just an opinion, just as the Perfect Game 2021-22 class rankings after the draft is an opinion. But here's the difference between PG and D1 2021-2 rankings. If the data were accurate, part of the difference would be transfers; I believe that that is a large part of the difference but not all by any means. I colored the ACC teams.
Given this, there is no sleeping on our rankings because there are a lot of hungry and talented teams out there. We need to worry about the ACC first and then play through whatever in the NCAAs.
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