2022 College Baseball Top 150

After missing nearly all of the shortened 2020 season, Lee broke out in 2021, hitting .342/.384/.626 with 27 doubles, 10 home runs and 57 RBIs for his father and coach Larry at Cal Poly.

After hitting .352/.439/.676 with 17 home runs as a freshman at Arizona, Berry followed coach Jay Johnson from Tucson to Baton Rouge, becoming the highest-profile transfer in the first offseason in over a decade in which players were able to transfers between Division I schools without sitting out a year.

With another season like the last, when he hit .337/.462/.697 with 21 home runs, Jace Jung, one of the finest all-around hitters in the country, could find himself drafted higher than his brother Josh, who was taken eighth overall in 2019.

The current favorite to be selected first overall in the 2023 draft, Crews is coming off of hitting .362/.453/.663 with 18 home runs as a first-year player last season. He’ll be just one of a whole host of All-American candidates in the LSU lineup.

Jones, like so much of the Stanford lineup, struggled mightily during the shortened 2020 season, but upon the start of the 2021 campaign, he looked like a different player. Perhaps the best athlete playing college baseball today, he hit .311/.453/.646 with 18 home runs last season.

Cross was fairly unknown going into the 2021 season, but that changed quickly once he established himself as one of the best hitters in the country on the way to putting up a .345/.415/.621 slash line.

Suasc was part of a dynamic freshman one-two punch at Arizona last season alongside Berry. He hit .335/.392/.591 with 24 doubles and 12 home runs a season ago and flashed promising tools defensively, including a plus arm.

Sims will go into the 2022 season as Mississippi State’s Friday starter, one season after he had a 1.44 ERA, a .149 opponent batting average and 100 strikeouts in 56.1 innings as the Bulldogs’ stopper in the bullpen.

Because of the cancellation of the 2020 season, Barco has what counts as a lengthy track record among third-year pitchers in college baseball because he has been in the Florida rotation since arriving on campus. He has a 3.52 ERA and 120 strikeouts in 102.1 innings across two seasons.

DeLauter only got to play 28 games for JMU in 2021 thanks to an already limited scheduling becoming more limited due to cancellations, but he made them count, hitting .386/.508/.723. Then, he went to the Cape Cod League and hit .298 with nine home runs in 34 games.

Like DeLauter, Neto made people sit up and take notice of a player putting up huge numbers at a mid-major program. He hit .405/.488/.746 with 17 doubles, 12 home runs and 58 RBIs during the spring while also putting up a 3.43 ERA in 21 innings on the mound. Then, on the Cape, he hit .295 with four homers in 20 games between the regular season and playoffs.

Messick was quietly dominant in 2021, going 8-2 with a 3.10 ERA and 126 strikeouts in 90 innings, and he’ll go into 2022 with a chance to end the season as the best starting pitcher in the country.

Minor injuries kept Whisenhunt from carrying as heavy a load as he otherwise would have at ECU last season, but he still put up good numbers, including a 3.77 ERA and 79 strikeouts in 62 innings. He was excellent over the summer with USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team as well, striking out 10 in six innings.

Gonzalez was dynamic from the jump as a freshman, hitting .355/.443/.561 with 16 doubles, 12 home runs, 55 RBIs and more walks (38) than strikeouts (34), a real testament to his plate discipline, which is not often a strength of a first-year hitter in the SEC.

One of the best high school prospects to make it to a college campus last season, Parada didn’t disappoint in year one for Georgia Tech. He had a .318/.379/.550 slash line with 20 doubles and nine home runs and more of the same should be expected in 2022.

Moore’s numbers are impressive enough as it is. He’s a career .291/.388/.534 hitter with 18 home runs in 77 games, in fact. But more than that, he seems to have a knack for the clutch hit and seems more comfortable in those big moments than just about any other college hitter.

Game-breaking speed is Bradfield, Jr.’s calling card, and he swiped 47 bases in 53 tries last season. But he’s also quite the hitter and has impressive plate discipline, as shown with a .336 average and .451 on-base percentage in 2021. Simply put, he’s one of the most unique offensive threats in the sport.

Yet another masher in the LSU lineup, Doughty is coming off of hitting .308/.368/.546 with 13 home runs and 55 RBIs a season ago, showing off the power that many evaluators weren’t sure would arrive during his time in Baton Rouge.

When paired with teammate Parker Messick, Hubbart helps give Florida State arguably the best one-two punch in the country. In 2021, he had a 3.80 ERA, a .208 opponent batting average and 94 strikeouts in 71 innings.

Witt will move into the Texas rotation after he had a 3.16 ERA and 73 strikeouts in 57 innings as a key reliever on a Longhorns team that made it to the final four of the College World Series last season.

Another reliever-turned-starter, Miami hopes that Palmquist is as successful in the rotation as he was last year in the bullpen, when he held opponents to a .143 batting average and had a 2.22 ERA and 75 strikeouts compared to just eight walks in 44.2 innings.

After operating below the radar going into 2021, Beavers now has to be considered among the best bats on the West Coast after he hit .303/.401/.630 with 18 home runs and 49 RBIs last season.

Graham has been a consistent producer in the Oklahoma lineup each of the last two seasons, and he was one of the country’s hottest hitters in 2020 at the time the season was canceled. In 2021, he hit .288/.400/.502 with 11 home runs.

Fabian might not have had the kind of season he was hoping to have in 2021 in a general sense, as he hit just .249 and struggled with strikeouts, but he was still incredibly productive from a power standpoint with 20 home runs and he continued to be an excellent defensive player. After eschewing the draft over the summer, he’s back in Gainesville to prove he can be a more complete hitter.

Elko, already a popular and accomplished player in college baseball, was elevated to cult hero status late last season, when he played on a torn ACL and thrived, hitting seven of his 16 total home runs after the injury. Now fully healthy again, Elko should be one of the best run producers in the country in 2022.