The college baseball regular season has come to a close, as Mississippi State baseball wrapped up SEC play with a dominant sweep of Missouri. With the postseason upon us, the SEC announced its baseball award winners for 2025. Only one Diamond Dawg earned SEC honors this year, and it was a newcomer to Starkville.
Mississippi State Bulldogs' Ace Reese earns multiple SEC honors
Mississippi State third baseman Ace Reese was named 1st Team All-SEC. The former Houston transfer put up massive numbers this spring for the Bulldogs at the plate. Within the SEC he ranks third in batting average (.369), second in slugging percentage (.772), third in OPS (1.212), third in RBI (66), third in hits (76), second in doubles (18), and second in home runs (21). That's about as good all-around production as you'll find in the conference.
Given his impressive output, he was named the SEC's Newcomer of the Year for 2025. This comes on the heels of being named the SEC's Player of the Week after an 8-12 weekend that featured four home runs at Missouri. On top of all this, Reese was Mississippi State's nomination for the Ferris Trophy, given to the best college baseball player in Mississippi. The award would ultimately go to USM's JB Middleton, but that doesn't change anything about how remarkable Ace Reese has been for the Diamond Dawgs this year and should continue to be in the postseason.
Mississippi State will need to do whatever is necessary to keep Ace Reese in Starkville
Despite being a legit 1st round talent, as a true sophomore, Ace Reese is guaranteed to be playing college baseball for at least one more season, unable to enter the MLB Draft until after his junior year. That should be great news for Mississippi State because they should be entering the 2026 season knowing they have one of the very best hitters in all of college baseball.
But unfortunately in the modern era of college sports, you can't just assume those things. With the transfer portal and NIL, there's always someone looking to poach your best players, and athletes are understandably going to look for the best possible deals. That's not to say Ace Reese will try to leave State this offseason, but it would be naive to think other programs won't be pushing to get him in the portal with lucrative NIL offerings. And that means the Bulldogs have to fend off those suitors.
Based on the reported direction of the head coaching search, it at least appears that MSU is prepared to spend big in baseball going forward and assure the program remains capable of competing at a national level. That would suggest that when it comes to making the financial commitments necessary to keep high-level players on the roster, they're going to do so. One has to think they'll do what is needed to keep Ace Reese a Bulldog for another year.