The Usual Suspects?

The SEC is annually the strongest conference in college baseball and 2010 is proving to be no different. Just when there seemed to be some separation last week the waters became more muddied this past weekend with almost every series being a big one. With various RPI and polls there are only two irrelevant teams left in the conference in the two Bulldogs of Georgia and Mississippi State, who could have predicted those two schools would be the also ran’s? Most people seem to think that the SEC will get 9 schools to regional’s this year, that’s one more than will compete in the conference tournament at the end of the month. With Hoover so close I wanted to try and break down who will go and who might win.

Fourteen days ago the obvious choice was the LSU Tigers, the defending national champions who are loaded with Juniors and Seniors who have done all this before. Players like Matt Gaudet, Blake Dean and Micah Gibbs carried the team in hitting while the pitching staff, including top 5 draft prospect Anthony Ranaudo, were projecting to at least compete with Texas to be the best in the country. The last two weeks has seen that all unravel with the Bayou Bengals dropping seven in a row and being swept in two consecutive SEC series. The first to Ole Miss was seen more as a blip than a problem, all good teams lose series and Oxford is a very difficult place to go in any sport but being swept by Florida in Gainesville this weekend has really set the alarm bells ringing for Paul Manieri’s side. What has let the Tigers down is the pitching that they had so much faith in and especially their ace Ranaudo. After sitting the first month of the season with a stress reaction in his shoulder he was expected to come back and carry this team to their second consecutive national title, instead in his seven games back he has gone 2-2 with a 7.30 ERA. More worrying than that have been his performances in big games, first in one of the most hyped NCAA pitching match-ups in recent memory Ranaudo faced Ole Miss stud Drew Pomeranz on national television and got lit up lasting only 1.2 innings and giving up 9 runs on 9 hits. One week later trying to right the ship against the Gators he went only 2 innings giving up 4 runs on 6 hits. I honestly don’t think this team is good enough to win the SEC this year for the simple fact they have no clutch pitching behind Matty Ott (who himself got lit up Sunday) and Georgia has proven this year you don’t win much without pitching.

So if not LSU who? Friday I would have said without hesitation Arkansas was not only the best team in the conference but in the country. They were riding the hot hand pitcher on Fridays in Drew Smyly and have the most explosive offensive many of who have experience of the College World Series last year. Auburn, a really strong team themselves, made all those things look very difficult to justify this weekend. The Razorbacks headed home looking to bounce back after last weekend’s 2-1 series loss to Florida and promptly dropped two games again, even being out-slugged by a powerful Tiger team in the rubber match Sunday. I still think the Hogs are the strongest team in the SEC but they really need a good run down the stretch to get the crucial national seed. If they slip up the team most likely to take advantage are the Ole Miss Rebels who have been quietly taking care of business this year. In Drew Pomeranz they have a pitcher that Keith Law of ESPN thinks is a top 5 draft pick and are beginning to build consistency hitting the ball, their 10 game winning streak reflects this. The winner of this weekend’s series in Oxford could very well have the inside track to winning the SEC West and securing a national seed, but it has far more short-term implications. Friday night could decide who the best pitcher in the West is, Pomeranz or fellow Drew Smyly, and the rest of the weekend will be all about who swings the bats best. The winners of this series I predict will win the College World Series in Omaha, but not the SEC championship.

The two favourites right now have to be the leading teams in the East, those being Florida and the incredibly impressive Gamecocks of South Carolina. These two don’t have the super stud pitching possessed by teams in the West by they both have very solid rotations with USC posting the second best mark in the conference at 3.64 and Florida fourth best with a 4.06 ERA. What is key to the offenses is not their explosiveness, like the Razorbacks, but their timeliness and clutch hitting. With the combined pitching and timely hit the Eastern powers have put together SEC best records of 16-5 and 15-6 respectively, best of all they face each other in the final series of the regular season in Columbia, a series shaping up to be a three game play-off for the SEC regular season crown. If they continue to take care of business in the conference tournament it could be a dress rehearsal for the championship game at the end of the month.