The early baseball polls are trickling out and I'll have our season preview up as we get closer to the first pitch, but here's the preview: the early polls love LSU.
The NCBWA poll came out yesterday and LSU is #2 behind UNC. This is on the heels of Collegiate Baseball Magazine ranking us #1. The All-American teams are littered with LSU players, especially on the hitter's side. Dean-Mitchell-Landry is such an absurdly good outfield, it makes me dizzy. Blake Dean is a first team preseason All-American, Jared Mitchell is showing up on third teams and honorable mentions, and Leon Landry is, well, sort of awesome even if he's not getting the same national hype.
I'm not as pumped about the pitching, but Coleman being the all-everything releiver coming out of the pen makes me feel a little better. Whether LSU wins a national title or not depends a lot on someone in the rotation stepping up as the man. but we're getting ahead of ourselves, we'll cover that later.
OK, preseason polls are essentially meaningless. But it is a huge step for Mainieri's program. Last year, he brought us back to Omaha, a year earlier than I honestly thought he could. Now, he's brought us back to the top of the college baseball universe. for the first time since Skip left, LSU is the hunted.
It feels good to be the bad mo-fo's on the block again. Gorilla Ball is back.