The 2009 baseball season officially gets underway today—in California. Not at the major league, minor league or major-college levels—in junior college.
By this weekend, a number of traditional Sun-Belt teams at the junior college, NCAA Division II and III, and NAIA levels will launch their 2009 seasons. By contrast, Division I teams will not open until the unified D-I starting date of Feb. 20. Major league teams? Not until April 6.
With junior-college teams out of the chute first, we’ve began our preview coverage of the top teams and top prospects. We unveiled our list of the Top 250 Junior-College Prospects last week (available to PG Crosschecker Insider-level subscribers only). Our Daily Top 10 on Friday also focused on junior-college baseball.
Today, we have released our list of the nation’s Top 50 Junior College Teams. We’ll be providing mini-sketches on each team over the course of the next day or two, similar to the profile on Tennessee’s Walters State JC, our pre-season No. 1 ranked team. (See Below.)
Walters State, the 2006 Junior College World Series champion, returns a number of key players from the team that went 55-9 a year ago, carried PG Crosschecker’s No. 1 national ranking into the World Series and slugged 161 homers in 64 games. Among the Senators returning players is sophomore first baseman Kyle Koeneman, who led the nation with 29 homers in 2008.
The Senators edged out Texas’ Grayson County College, the 2007 national champion, and Florida’s Chipola JC, the ’06 champion for the top spot in our 2009 pre-season rankings. Grayson has reloaded and is ranked third, Chipola sixth. Three Texas teams are ranked in the top 10.
The task of ranking junior-college teams can be much trickier than ranking conventional four-year college teams—if not just because of the constant turnover that occurs with rosters that include only freshmen and sophomores. But the situation is further complicated because meaningful information to rank teams is much harder to come by.
In addition, there’s a lot of juggling apples and oranges as the powerful California (not to mention Oregon and Washington) schools are not members of the National Junior College Athletic Association—and thus do not play, with minor exceptions, an interactive schedule with other teams in the country. Many states do not even have junior colleges—let alone JC baseball programs.
Moreover, juco teams in the west (specifically Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington) use wood bats—though NJCAA-affiliated teams change to aluminum in post-season play to put themselves on equal footing with other teams around the country. Like the NCAA, the NJCAA is also divided into three divisions, with separate World Series competitions in each division.
The more popular and more competitive Division I World Series returns to Grand Junction, Colo., for the 52nd year, from May 23-30. The D-II World Series is scheduled for Enid, Okla., from May, 23-29, while the D-III series will be played in Tyler, Texas, from May 16-22. The California state playoffs will culminate in a Final Four in Fresno May 23-25, while the Northwest Athletics Association of Community College championship is slated for Vancouver, Wash. May 21-25.
Our ranking of the top 50 junior-college teams is all encompassing—all states, all divisions. Though California is not a member of the NJCAA, it leads the way with nine teams. Florida and Texas have seven each. The rankings are not monopolized by D-I teams only as No. 22 Des Moines Area (Iowa), No. 33 LSU-Eunice and No. 48 Heartland (Ill.) are D-II teams.
With small-college seasons at all levels generally set to begin in Southern locations this weekend, we’ll provide an overview of the top 10 teams and top 10 prospects for the 2009 draft in each classification later this week. Our planned Division I preview coverage of the top 100 teams and assorted player/prospect rankings will come in February.
Here’s a look at the top 10 junior-college teams in our top 50 ranking. We’ve noted the team’s place in our final ’08 JC team rankings. The top prospect on each team and where the player ranks on our recently-published list of the nation’s top 250 JC prospects is also identified.
| Rank |
Team |
’08 Record |
’08 Ranking |
Top Prospect (Ranking) |
| 1. |
*Walters State (Tenn.) |
55-9 |
2 |
Trent Rothlin, rhp (11) |
| 2. |
*Central Arizona |
46-22 |
9 |
Kevin Gelinas, lhp (6) |
| 3. |
*Grayson County (Texas) |
48-15 |
1 |
Brett Bruening, rhp (8) |
| 4. |
Santa Ana (Calif.) |
37-13 |
22 |
Brandon Pinder, rhp (72) |
| 5. |
Howard (Texas) |
48-10 |
13 |
Miles Hamblin, c (20) |
| 6. |
*Chipola (Fla.) |
45-14 |
3 |
Patrick Corbin, lhp (7) |
| 7. |
San Jacinto (Texas) |
44-14 |
17 |
Jake Cowan, rhp (5) |
| 8. |
Spartanburg Methodist (S.C.) |
44-15 |
32 |
Josh Salay, rhp (107) |
| 9. |
Fresno (Calif.) |
37-11 |
21 |
Garrett Weber, ss (58) |
| 10. |
Young Harris (Ga.) |
50-14 |
10 |
Eric Swegman, rhp (23) |
| *Participated in 2008 Junior College World Series |
1. WALTERS STATE (Tenn.)
2008 Record: 55-9.
Team Capsule: With a No. 1 national ranking and a pulverizing lineup that produced 161 homers in 64 games, the Senators had high expectations of winning their second national title in three years in 2008. But they were quickly eliminated quickly in Grand Junction, winning just one of three games. Returning from that team, though, are sophomore 1B Kyle Koeneman (.415-29-67), the national home-run leader; sophomore C Jesse Wierzbicki (.433-9-33), the team’s top hitter; and sophomore LHP Chad Bell (12-2, 3.70).
Top Prospect: Trent Rothlin, rhp. He struggled to find regular work in 2008 at Clemson (1-0, 9.69 in 13 IP), but with a nasty running fastball up to 94 from a three-quarters arm slot, he’ll pitch a lot this spring as the No. 2 starter behind Bell.
Players, PG Crosschecker Top 250 Prospects (7): No. 11 Trent Rothlin, rhp; No. 15 Chad Bell, lhp; No. 74 Zac Fuesser, lhp; No. 82 Jesse Wierzbicki, c; No. 142 Sam Munson, ss; No. 152 Cullen Park, rhp; No. 166 Kyle Koeneman, 1b.
Opening Game, 2009: Feb. 1 at USC Salketatchie.
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