2017 Season for Mississippi State Baseball will be Fine

With a record 11 players being selected in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, many Mississippi State baseball fans are fearing the worst in 2017.

A lot of players for the Mississippi State baseball team won’t be back in 2017. But just because there will be a lot of new faces doesn’t mean this team will be awful in 2017.

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Think back to the start of the season in 2016. Outside of Jacob Robson and Gavin Collins, the Bulldogs were going to need a significant number of players who had never been counted on before to contribute to step up. Here is a sample of players who stepped up from modest seasons in 2015.

• Reid Humphreys hit .247 with 5 home runs and 27 RBIs as a sophomore. In 2016, he raised his average to .310 and added 17 more RBIs.
• Brent Rooker only recorded 74 at-bats in 2015 and hit 2 home runs and had 12 RBIs. 2016 saw Rooker hit .324 with 11 home runs and 54 RBIs.
• Gavin Collins hit .228 with 2 home runs and 16 RBIs. Collins stepped up big in 2016 with a .302 average, 10 home runs, and 39 RBIs.
• Dakota Hudson pitched 16.2 innings in 2015. He was a first team All-SEC pitcher in 2016.
• Daniel Brown nearly tripled his innings pitched, and still managed to have an ERA of 3.62, over a full run better than 2015, despite a terrible start to the beginning of the season.

The point is the 2016 Mississippi State baseball team was going to rely heavily on players who had never contributed to the team in a significant manner. Much of the positive talk surrounding this team before the season started was because the Bulldogs had developed so much in the summer.

The coaching staff has been recruiting at really high levels the last few years. The current crop of incoming players had four players drafted to the MLB, but only one is expected to sign with an MLB club. There is plenty of talent, they just have to live up to the potential.

And that will be the key for the Mississippi State baseball team in 2017. When the current roster of players goes off to their summer leagues, can they make the same progress that the 2016 players did?

It might behoove you to pay attention to the Cape Cod Summer League. This is where a lot of Mississippi State baseball players will head off to hone their skills during the summer months.

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If they can make the same type of improvement, there isn’t any reason to believe the 2017 team won’t be a top 25 team throughout the season. Expecting the 2017 team to repeat as SEC Champs might be asking a little much.

But we thought asking the 2016 team to win the SEC Championship was asking a lot. So maybe this team just has a lot more talent than most of us realize. And if so, don’t expect there to be too many down years in the coming years.