Baseball America's Final College Poll

Team's weaknesses are exposed the longer the season lasts. That happened to us. We were short on top-quality starting pitching. Our bullpen improved greatly, but was still inconsistent after Brown. And often 1/3 of batting lineup was in the .200 range (SS, 3B, DH).

I still think we overachieved just a bit to reach a Super final. It was a special season, and with one or two hits on Monday we go to Omaha, where I think we go 1-2 at best. So yes, it was a missed opportunity, because it's hard to get a top-8 seed and home-field advantage.

The loss of Frisch can't be minimized. With him and Hjerpe, we have that super 1-2 punch, like Buck/Nickerson or Heimlich/Fehmel, which is especially huge in postseason play. We did not have that.

Wheeler wasn't gonna hit .400, but he was never the same after his injury and we missed his bat. We were short one right-handed bat, lefties really gave our lefties problems and when that happened we were often challenged offensively.

And it shouldn't have, but the miserable weather detracted from my overall enjoyment of 2022 Beaver baseball. It just was no fun being wet, cold, or a combination of both, at almost every game.

A lot of teams are licking their wounds right now - not one seeded team survived to the finals.  Congrats to Ole Miss.

Overall, I think OSU exceeded expectations. Our composite Preseason ranking was #20. For most of the season we were ranked #2 and finished #10 by D1 Baseball. Missed opportunities and maybe we ran out of gas? Yes. I am encouraged with Mitch Canham. I was still on the fence but I wanted to give him time to prove himself. Especially, following the issues with Covid. I saw a huge improvement in our bull pen from early in the year when they would threaten to blow our 10 run leads. The end of the season looked much better (with the exception of Carpenter). Time will tell if Coach Canham can maintain and exceed this level of play but I for one will support him. Go Beavs!!

This year just showed how hard it is. . We were exposed by good teams and it seemed that Melton cooled off and likely played hurt. Also defense failed a little. Every year will be a battle to get to a super regional. If we fall back at all we will be on the road. Let’s hope we fill the holes and improve at the plate. I guess we should of been concerned when Stanford beat us 2 out of 3 and shut us out 1-0.

Agreed. I think also we played the best teams in our conference at the end of the season. In the end, the schedule revealed OSU to be a very good team, but not so dominant as to be ranked #2 in the nation. Still a very enjoyable season. We were in it to the end. 

This was the year to make a run, and we did despite numerous injury challenges. College baseball is very cyclic; there's no 'reloading', you do in fact rebuild every few years. I think this is why Casey retired; he had that special group of guys from 2016-2018, and didn't want to climb the multi-year mountain one more time.

Factoring in the lost Covid year, we were right on pace with putting together another contender in 2022 following our last one in 2018. I didn't think Canham could do it so quickly, especially with all the chaos surrounding Bailey's one year and the recruiting hit we obviously took with Casey leaving.

Now the hard work begins for Mitch and his staff. We have what seems like 187 players entering the Beaver locker room in the fall, and it's up to these coaches to sift through all the talent and find 35 guys who are poised to develop and build the foundation for the next run. This next group will be fully Mitch's, with no recruiting impact from Casey or Bailey. It'll be a few years until we see how effective they are in putting together another contender all on their own. We will probably need some patience in the short term with likely regression from this year's Super appearance, but my hopes remain high for the long term, and I believe we'll all have big smiles on our faces in 2-3 years.