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The goal of a college baseball program isn’t to develop major league players, although that’s certainly a secondary aspect of any successful program. But if you’re winning games and reaching the Men’s College World Series on a regular basis, you’re probably producing future major leaguers.
We’ve ranked this year’s eight Men’s College World Series teams based on the combined total of major league WAR produced by players from each school since the draft era began in 1965. Texas ranks first in large part to Roger Clemens’ 138.7 career WAR over 24 big league seasons — although, surprisingly, the Longhorns have produced just two position players with at least 10 WAR in the majors, Brandon Belt and Spike Owen. Lesson there: Reaching 10 career WAR in the majors is hard!
(For the purposes of tabulating WAR, we included only players with a positive WAR, as close to half the number of future major leaguers from a school are players who receive a cup of coffee and produce negative WAR.)
Here’s a snapshot for each CWS team:
Watch: Men’s College World Series, starting Fri. June 17 on ESPN
1. Texas
MLB WAR of drafted players: 369.9
Major leaguers from draft era: 73
College World Series appearances: 38 (titles in 1949, 1950, 1975, 1983, 2002, 2005)
No program comes close to the Longhorns’ 38 College World Series appearances and only USC has won more titles with 12. This will be the Longhorns sixth trip to Omaha since last winning the title in 2005. They went 3-2 last year under coach David Pierce, losing 4-3 to Mississippi State and just missing the final. After losing the first game of the super regional this year to East Carolina, the Longhorns rallied for 9-8 and 11-1 victories. Ivan Melendez bashed his NCAA-leading 32nd home run in the clincher.
Highest drafted player: Greg Swindell, second overall (Cleveland, 1986).
Top five WAR leaders: Roger Clemens, Burt Hooton, Greg Swindell, Belt, Shane Reynolds
Best current major leaguer: Belt hit .285/.393/.595 for the Giants over…
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Source : espn
