College World Series: 10 things to know about the 2022 field

Jun 11, 2022; College Station, TX, USA;  Texas A&M celebrates after defeating Louisville to advance to the 2022 NCAA College World Series at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park. Mandatory Credit: Chris Jones-USA TODAY Sports
By Mitchell Light
Jun 16, 2022

The 2022 College World Series begins at 2 p.m. (ET) on Friday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha. The field is comprised of four SEC teams (Texas A&M, Auburn, Arkansas and Ole Miss), two future SEC teams (Texas and Oklahoma) and Stanford and Notre Dame.

Stanford (No. 2) and Texas A&M (No. 5) are the only two top-eight national seeds that advanced to Omaha. Auburn and Texas were both No. 1 seeds in their regionals but had to go on the road in the Super Regionals. Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Arkansas were No. 2 seeds while Ole Miss was a No. 3 seed (and perhaps the final team in the field of 64).

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Here are 10 things to know about the 2022 College World Series.

Bucking the trend?

The pitching staffs at Texas A&M and Oklahoma have allowed more hits than innings pitched during the 2022 season. That has not been a recipe for success in Omaha. No team has won a national title while allowing more than one hit per inning since the Cinderella Fresno State Bulldogs, a No. 4 seed, in 2008.

Dating back to 1999 — the year the field expanded to 64 — only two such teams have won a national title (that Fresno State team and 2000 LSU) and only three other teams have reached the championship series (2008 Georgia, 2005 Florida and 2002 South Carolina).

The last 10 national champions have combined to allow 0.873 hits per inning during the season while the last 10 runners-up have been slightly better at 0.843.

Oklahoma, which advanced to the CWS by winning two of three games at Virginia Tech, has allowed 1.081 hits per inning. Texa A&M, which swept Louisville in College Station, checks in at 1.033.

Offensive Irish

Notre Dame scored 19 runs in its shocking Super Regional win over Tennessee in Knoxville. In 10 SEC weekend series, the Volunteers allowed more than 10 total runs only three times, with a high of 15 in a series win over Auburn in late April.

The Fighting Irish hit .272 for the series against a Tennessee staff that led the nation with a .199 batting average against.

Fantastic freshman

Ole Miss is making its first trip to Omaha since 2014 thanks in large part to the work of true freshman pitcher Hunter Elliott. In two NCAA Tournament starts, the left-hander from Tupelo, Miss., has pitched a combined 12 1/3 innings and allowed six hits and one earned run. In Sunday’s Super Regional-clinching win at Southern Miss, Elliott struck out 10 and allowed only three hits in 7 1/3 innings.

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The Rebels have allowed a total of 11 runs in five NCAA Tournament games, highlighted by back-to-back shutouts over Southern Miss.

During the regular season, Ole Miss ranked ninth in the SEC with a 5.68 ERA in league games only and allowed SEC opponents to hit .275. In the NCAA Tournament, the Rebels’ ERA is 2.00.

Titanic production

Texas outfielder Ivan Melendez leads the nation with 32 home runs — more than 41 Division I teams hit during the entire 2022 season. The fourth-year junior from El Paso, Texas, also leads college baseball in slugging percentage (.888) and RBIs (94) and ranks fourth in on-base percentage (.516) and 17th in batting average (.396).

Melendez has hit at least one home run in 26 of the 65 games he appeared in and went without an RBI in a game only 20 times.

In 2021, his first at Texas after transferring from Odessa (Texas) College, Melendez hit .319 with 13 home runs and 51 RBIs.

QB1

Arkansas pitcher Connor Noland is part of a small fraternity — and it’s so small that there is only one other member who comes to mind. Noland is one of the very few athletes who has started a college football game at quarterback and started a College World Series game on the mound.

The other known member of this club is former Tennessee star Todd Helton, who started three games at quarterback for the Vols in 1994 and threw a complete game in a win over Clemson in the 1995 CWS.

(And thanks to two readers, we can add Texas’ James Street and Texas A&M’s Jeff Granger to the list. Street played in the CWS three times — 1968-70 — and had a 20-0 record as the starting quarterback. Granger was a part-time starter at QB for the Aggies and was an All-America pitcher in 1993 for a team that reached the CWS. )

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Noland arrived at Arkansas as a football signee in the Class of 2018, a three-star prospect ranked No. 341 in the 247Sports Composite. He played in four games as a true freshman, earning a start in a late-April win over Tulsa (one of the Hogs’ two wins that season). That spring, he emerged as a key member of the Arkansas pitching staff, starting 19 games — including a 5-4 loss to Texas Tech that eliminated the Hogs from the CWS — and recording a 4.02 ERA.

Due in part to his early success on the mound, Noland retired from football in June 2019 to focus on baseball. And on Saturday night in Omaha, he will make his second career CWS start when the Hogs meet Stanford.

Cardinal back on track

Stanford alum David Esquer has the Cardinal in the College World Series for the second straight season and the 18th time in program history. The Cardinal reached the CWS 14 times from 1982 through 2008 — with national titles in 1987 and 1988 — but endured an 11-season drought until breaking through last season.

The Cardinal have reached the championship series three times in the current format (dating back to 1999) but lost to LSU in 2000, Miami in 2001 and Rice in 2003. This season was the first time Stanford has hosted a Super Regional since 2003.

Stanford heads to Omaha with wins in 20 of its past 22 games.

Aggie explosion

There’s little doubt that Texas A&M is the most improved team in the nation in 2022. The Aggies earned the No. 5 national seed and advanced to the College World Series just one year after failing to even qualify for the 12-team SEC tournament.

First-year head coach Jim Schlossnagle reshaped the roster with an influx of transfers who have engineered an astounding offensive turnaround. Last year, the Aggies ranked 11th or worse in the SEC in the following categories (league games only): batting average (.249, 12th), on-base percentage (.330, 11th), slugging percentage (.384, 13th) and runs scored (149, 12th). In 2022, they led the league in average (.290), on-base percentage (.398) and runs scored (233) and ranked third in slugging percentage (.481).

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So while Tennessee made national headlines for its offensive prowess — and rightfully so — it was actually Texas A&M that had the most productive offense within the nation’s best league.

Sonny D!

It’s no surprise that Sonny DiChiara emerged as a productive bat in the middle of the Auburn lineup this season. He did, after all, hit 18 home runs and slug .598 as a junior at Samford in 2021. But he also hit “only” .273, the sixth-best average on a team that went 35-24 overall and 20-10 in the Southern Conference.

Fast forward one year and DiChiara is now being mentioned alongside some of the top power hitters in Auburn history, most notably Bo Jackson and Frank Thomas. Sonny D heads into the College World Series with a gaudy .392 batting average to go along with 22 home runs and 59 RBIs. He leads the nation in on-base percentage (.560) and ranks fifth in slugging (.809).

DiChiara earned first-team All-SEC honors and shared the league’s player of the year honors with LSU’s Dylan Crews.

Red-hot Sooner

Shortstop Peyton Graham is arguably the most feared bat in the Oklahoma lineup, but it’s hard to find a hotter hitter — on any team in the College World Series — than center fielder Tanner Tredaway. A fifth-year senior from Justin, Texas, Tredaway is 23 for 46 in 11 postseason games, four in the Big 12 tournament and seven in the NCAA Tournament.

And he has been his best in the biggest games. He went 3 for 5 in a 5-4 regional title win over Florida and 4 for 5 in the Game 3 win at Virginia Tech in the Super Regionals.

Tredaway has raised his batting average from .345 to .373 since the end of the regular season.

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By the numbers

The eight teams in Omaha have combined for 100 appearances in the College World Series and 11 national championships. Texas leads the way in both categories, with 38 trips and six national titles, followed by Stanford (18 and three). Oklahoma is the only other team in the field that has won a national championship; the Sooners have been to Omaha 11 times and won titles in 1951 and 1994.

(Photo of Texas A&M: Chris Jones / USA Today)

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Mitch Light

Mitch Light is a college football editor for The Athletic. He previously served as the managing editor for The Athletic Nashville and The Athletic Memphis and prior to that was the managing editor at Athlon Sports for 18 years. Follow Mitch on Twitter @MitchLight