I follow BYU baseball fairly closely and watch most of their games each year. Based upon some threads from the last few weeks, insiders seem to think this year's team will be strong.

We do have most of the top hitters coming back:

Andrew Pintar
Mitch McIntyre
Cole Gambill
Josh Cowden
Peyton Cole

However, "top hitters" is a relative term. These top five hitters had a combined batting average of around .270. Our overall team batting average last year was .245. There is absolutely no doubt that our hitting needs to improve substantially or we will not make the WCC tournament. .245 again this year and we'll have another losing record.

Now pitching. Again, most of our top pitchers are coming back:

Reid McLaughlin
Bryce Robison
Jack Sterner
Carter Smith
Cy Neilson
Cooper McKeehan

What I find the most interesting is who left: Mikade Johnson, who left to Salt Lake Community College, and Tyson Heaton, who is at Central Arizona College. I don't know if they were forced out or left because they didn't like the program, but I think both of these pitchers leaving is a net negative. Both were a part of the huge 2019 signing class and I think both of them were as good as some of the pitchers listed above. Johnson is already a consensus JUCO pre-season first team all-american and Heaton was immediately picked up by Grand Canyon University, which is a real strong program and has qualified for post-season play in recent years.

There is tremendous weight on Cy Nielson this year. Guy played in the Cod League this past summer (really big deal) and has a cannon for an arm. However, he had a 7.75 ERA last year, which is poor. We need him to give us 7-8 wins and definitely a sub-5 ERA. The other pitcher who needs to contribute is Boston Mabeus. I know he was fresh off a mission last year and struggled with control, but he has some attitude and fight in him and I definitely see him possibly being one of our top 5 pitchers after having a full off-season under his belt. Bryce Robison and Reid McLaughlin are expected to have strong seasons again as well. Overall, I'm a bit higher on our pitching staff than our hitting, but losing Johnson and Heaton to JUCO hurts our depth.

There are a ton of new players on the roster compared to last year. Some are RMs and then there are a lot of true freshmen. It is extremely hard for a true freshman to contribute, let alone see playing time. Littlewood always finds a way to get all of his younger players some playing time, which I think is one of his strengths. We'll see if there is an Andrew Pintar in the mix among the new players who jumps out of nowhere, earns a starting spot, and plays well.

Catcher will be interesting. I don't think we have a single catcher on the roster who has D-1 experience (correct me if I'm wrong). I'll be honest, this is a coaching issue. There is no excuse to go into a season without a catcher who has at least some D-1 experience. I don't know who has earned the position this fall, but I'm guessing it is either JD Gardner or Chase Peterson, the JUCO transfer from SLCC. Let's hope one of them steps up.

A few other general observations/criticisms. No names, but I find it very interesting that there are some players back for 2022 who had, statistically, horrible seasons in 2021. I don't know if there is some sort of allegiance or loyalty by the coaches to these players, but it's a "what have you done for me lately" environment in college athletics. I'm guessing that since you can have a 40-man roster this year that there simply aren't other players available who are better and who improve the roster. This leads to my final observation--I still believe that BYU needs to recruit the JUCO ranks a bit harder and not go so heavy on HS kids, particularly in light of the challenges that missions give you. I think BYU should have a board that literally tracks every RM who is playing JUCO ball across the country ( I bet the number would be under 100). Instead, JUCO recruiting for BYU involves mostly just following the kids at CSI and SLCC because a lot of them are LDS and it is easy to follow them. I know for a fact that there are a number of RM JUCO players playing in the ACCAC and my guess is that BYU doesn't know about them. Another sign that BYU under-recruits JUCOs: they do not hold any camps during the year where JUCO players are even allowed to attend. Both Utah and UVU open some of their camps up to JUCO kids.

Overall, I see us being better than last year and finishing with a winning record (we were 23-27 last year), but I think we'll finish somewhere around 3-4 in conference (still not convinced our hitting will improve enough). Part of having a better overall record is that I think our non-conference schedule is a bit easier than last year (we don't play Oregon State and UT series). Regardless of the challenges, I'm excited for the season to start and follow our Cougs.