Several times this season I have wanted coach to pinch hit or pinch run and I struggled to find a viable candidate on our bench. I have also lusted for a huge power hitting First Baseman to snag a few more errant throws and improve our anemic batting average. I opined that we must have fewer position players than other teams, but decided to test that hypothesis using statistics of teams more successful than ours at this point of this season. So I picked the top three teams according to D1 Baseball. I also added Texas Tech to have some Big 12 flavor. Also my friend George Hawthorne thinks that Tim Tadlock is a better coach that David Pierce.
The NCAA limits each team to a maximum of 35 roster players, designated before the 1st game of the season. Any player on an athletic scholarship at the beginning of the school year has to be counted toward the 35 player roster, even if he cannot play at all during the season
Each team has the NCAA maximum of 35 roster players, except Texas has 36 and so does Mississippi State. We know the Texas situation is that the NCAA allowed Texas to add Turner Gauntt at catcher because of the season ending surgery of DJ Petrinsky and mounting injuries to Michael McCann and Caston Peter. I suspect a similar situation happened at Mississippi State because I see that they are also carrying four catchers now. In those two cases I ignored the extra catcher. I counted two way players such as Kamron Fields as .5 Pitcher and .5 Position Player.
I didn't know how to count Beau Ridgeway. He was on the roster at the start of the season and pitched in three games, but has now left the team and is not currently listed on the online roster. Thomas Burbank (LHP/INF), Justin Eckhardt (RHP) and Chase Roberts (OF) are all on the online roster, but have not played this year. I have seen Thomas Burbank and Chase Roberts in uniform at home games warming up RF, so they must be on the 35 player roster. There is a note in Justin Eckhardt’ biography: Will miss the 2019 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Maybe Justin isn’t a scholarship athlete this year and isn't on this year’s official 35 player roster and is just listed on the online roster. Maybe Beau had his 35 player roster spot? I ended up counting Beau Ridgeway and not Justin Eckhardt.
Here are the numbers (Sorry that I couldn't get the tables to stay aligned):
Ranking Team Roster Position Players Pitchers
1 UCLA 35 20 15
2 Oregon State 35 21.5 13.5
3 Mississippi State 35 19 16
22 Texas Tech 35 16 19
NR Texas 35 18 17
I see that I was correct that we do have significantly fewer position players than the more successful teams, except Texas Tech. The preseason injury to David Hamilton made that even worse because we couldn’t replace him on the roster, even with a walk-on, because he was a scholarship athlete.
I tried to project for next year using the 15 players signed to LOIs in November, but stopped pretty quickly when I saw that six of the seven pitchers are listed as dual role players, but few of them will both pitch and hit much, if any, in college. Also, at least 3 of the 15 will likely be drafted high enough to seriously consider going pro. There are just too many uncertainties. I assume the coaches have a much better idea which dual role players will be able to play both ways at the college level.
Last edited: Apr 18, 2019
