Baseball America 2019 preseason All-American team breakdown and takeaways

Baseball America has broken out their college baseball 2019 preseason All-American team. Let’s go through it and breakdown the list.

As we get closer and closer to the 2019 college baseball season, it’s time for media outlets to start releasing their evaluations of our favorite players in the form of All-American team lists. Baseball America finally did just that.

For the uninitiated, an All-American Team is, as it sounds, a group of players from all over the country selected and compiled to be on something of a preseason watch list together. Each team has a player for each position (in the case of pitchers, multiple are chosen and a starting rotation is built) and then there are typically three different teams.

The first team is the most prestigious, the second team is a step down from there, and then the third team is a subsequent step down from that. Just being named one of the best players in all of college baseball at your position is a pretty big deal. Getting named to the first team is a huge deal.

But of course, this is all preseason stuff and isn’t necessarily indicative of how things will end up as the season wraps up.

So, let’s start going through Baseball America’s preseason All-American team.

This All-American team list is put together a bit differently.

As Teddy Cahill of Baseball America points out, this list isn’t quite like your traditional preseason All-American team. Those are put together by multiple media members. This one is pieced together thanks to the input of Major League Baseball scouts.

So, if your favorite player isn’t on this list, you can’t blame Teddy. You can blame MLB scouts for not evaluating them properly. Or, well, the way you believe that those players should be evaluated. Really, that’s pretty much the same thing, right?

Here’s what Baseball America’s 2019 All-American team looks like:

First Team 

Pitchers:

• SP: Tyler Dyson – Florida
• SP: Nick Lodolo – Texas Christian
• SP: Graeme Stinson – Duke
• SP: Zack Thompson – Kentucky
• RP: Matt Cronin – Arkansas

Fielders:

• C: Adley Rutschman – Oregon State
• 1B: Andrew Vaughn – California
• 2B: Chase Strumpf – UCLA
• 3B: Josh Jung – Texas Tech
• SS: Logan Davidson – Clemson
• OF: JJ Bleday – Vanderbilt
• OF: Michael Busch – North Carolina
• OF: Kyle Stowers – Stanford
• UTL: Matt Wallner – Southern Mississippi

Second Team

Pitchers:

• SP: Matt Canterino – Rice
• SP: George Kirby – Elon
• SP: Erik Miller – Stanford
• SP: Alek Manoah –  West Virginia
• RP: Jack Little – Stanford

Fielders:

• C: Shea Langeliers – Baylor
• 1B: Spencer Torkelson – Arizona State
• 2B: Noah Campbell – South Carolina
• 3B: Austin Shenton – Florida International
• SS: Bryson Stott – UNLV
• OF: Dominic Fletcher – Arkansas
• OF: Kameron Misner – Missouri
• OF: Bryant Packard – East Carolina
• UTL: J.T. Ginn – Mississippi State

Third Team

Pitchers:

• SP: Kyle Brnovich – Elon
• SP: Zack Hess – LSU
• SP: Ryne Nelson – Oregon
• SP: Ryan Zeferjahn – Kansas
• RP: Parker Caracci – Mississippi

Fielders:

• C: Patrick Bailey – North Carolina State
• 1B: Logan Wyatt – Louisville
• 2B: Michael Massey – Illinois
• 3B: Nick Quintana – Arizona
• SS: Will Wilson – North Carolina State
• OF: Wil Dalton – Florida
• OF: Heston Kjerstad – Arkansas
• OF: Will Robertson – Creighton
• UTL: Aaron Schunk – Georgia

Who was snubbed?

Parker Caracci deserved to be a bit higher. He had a 2.25 ERA and a 5-2 record last season as the Ole Miss Rebels made a run and hosted a Regional in Oxford. He appeared in 27 games, threw 48.0 innings, and struck out 73 of the 197 batters that he faced in the process. Having him on the third team isn’t the biggest insult in the world, but there’s an argument to move him up to the second team.

And staying in the state of Mississippi for a second, Mississippi State baseball folk hero and living legend Jake Mangum isn’t anywhere on the list. Mangum has been an incredibly productive player for the Bulldogs. He’ll likely go down as one of the best to ever play for the storied program. He’s got a career .356 batting average for the Bulldogs and is one of the fastest players in the country.

Final takeaways

The SEC, Pac-12 and the ACC have quite a few different players from various schools on this list. There are 13 players here representing schools from the Southeastern Conference, 9 from out west in the Pac-12, and then 6 from schools within the Atlantic Coast Conference. And that shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

These conferences tend to do a bit better at college baseball than others given that this is a spring and summer sport. It gets warmer in the South and in the Southwest and along the West Coast more so than it does along the upper Atlantic Coast, in the Great Lakes, and throughout the Midwest.

The regionalism of this sport shows up a bit here, but there are still some players from the Big Tenand the Big 12 present.