The Improbable Success of Oregon State and Oregon Baseball


baseball

Fifty miles apart, two college baseball powers are preparing to defend their home turf during the NCAA Regionals this weekend. If they can advance past Sunday, each will host a Super Regional a week later for a trip to Omaha for the College World Series.

The programs, both awarded No. 1 seeds in the tournament and part of the top 8 seeds assured of hosting a super regional if they advance that far, are surely from a warm weather, baseball hotbed, right? Florida? Southern California? Texas, perhaps?

Try again.

Try Oregon State and Oregon.

On Monday, both the Beavers and Ducks received word they had garnered a top eight national seed in the tournament that begins Friday, making Oregon the only state in the country that can lay claim to that honor. Oregon State, the Pac-12 champion, grabbed the No. 3 overall seed. The Ducks, second in the Pac-12, came in at No. 8.

And this year isn’t just an aberration. OSU went to three consecutive College World Series in the mid 2000s, winning two national titles in the process. Since reinstating their program just five years ago, Oregon now has three postseason appearances and has finished in the top three of the conference standings in back to back seasons.

Rhetoric aside, the ascension of OSU and UO to conference superiority and national relevance in baseball is one of the most improbable developments in the state’s college athletics history.

You already know some of the reasons why it’s shocking that both the Beavers and Ducks are having success on the diamond.

25_Jun.WH01SRV.epsThe programs don’t have a history to draw on. True. Before making it to the CWS in 2005, OSU hadn’t advanced to Omaha in over 50 years. Hell, prior to that year they hadn’t been in the NCAA Tournament for two decades. The Ducks, on the other hand, didn’t have a team for 28 years until the program started play again in 2009.

Yes, Oregon is a cold weather, rainy state. The college baseball season runs from February through May, when a steady does of precipitation pelts the Willamette Valley.

And finally, the state’s prep scene isn’t exactly teeming with prospects. Frankly, it’s not a knock, but when kids throughout the southern US are playing ball year round, compared to Oregon’s youth trapped inside during the winter months, it’s a simple reality. OSU has just 11 players on their roster from in state. The Ducks have even less, scribbling just six names of Oregon natives onto their 35-man roster.

So, yes, you know about the inherent disadvantages that Oregon State and Oregon encounter with building a program.

What you don’t know, however, is the biggest hurdle that Pat Casey and George Horton face when building their programs.

Unlike football or basketball, where coaches can award enough scholarships to fill a complete roster, the NCAA allows baseball programs to award 11.7 scholarships. Not per year. Total.

NCAA baseball is an equivalency sport, meaning the financial aid that programs can offer is limited to a set number of scholarships. The result is scholarships being split among the roster of players. This is different from football or basketball, where the teams are limited in the number of scholarships they can offer, but each player gets a full scholarship.

Specifically in baseball, a program can offer aid to up to 27 athletes on their 35 -man roster. Each athlete getting a scholarship must receive at least 25% of a full ride. This, of course, means that most (and sometimes all) players are getting partial scholarships.

So why is this a huge deterrent to success for programs outside of baseball hotbeds? Why does it stack the deck even more against the Beavers and Ducks?

It all comes back to the pool of potential recruits a team can land and the money it costs out of state recruits to play across state lines.

As noted above, OSU has 11 players from the state and UO has six. This means, the teams are filling their rosters with 24 and 29 players from out of state, respectively.

The out of state players, most of whom are getting a partial scholarship as little as 25% of a full ride, have to pay the difference themselves.

At UO, out of state tuition and fees runs nearly $29,000 per year. OSU comes in lower, but still over $22,000.

So consider that OSU and UO not only have to sell their program to recruits, they have to sell the cost of attending school there.

For example, if UO offers a recruit from California a 25% scholarship, that would cover about $7000 per year. The remainder, about $22,000 per year, is on the recruit and the family.

Now, remember that nearly all of OSU and UO’s recruits are also getting offers from schools in their home states. For a kid from California, for instance, heading to a California school can offer savings of tens of thousands of dollars over four years. While Oregon can tell a recruit that it will cost him $22k a year to go to school in Eugene, UCLA (in-state tuition and fees of $12,500) can tell the same kid that it will only cost him $9k. It’s no surprise, then, that 33 of UCLA’s 34 players are from California. Or that 27 of Florida State’s players have in-state residency. Or that Horton’s former school, Cal State Fullerton, has 34 of 35 players from in state.

When you think about how big a selling point the idea of saving $50,000 over four years is for a student and his parents, it’s clear why schools in baseball hotbeds are so successful. It doesn’t make sense for recruits to go to school anywhere else.

Simply put, the system in place is designed (intentionally or not) to keep recruits in their home states. For teams like the Beavers and Ducks, that’s a monumental hurdle to overcome.

How have Casey and Horton built their programs then?

There’s no distinct formula, but both programs must identify and recruit the right players, kids who are talented, have high development upside, and can afford to go to school out of state. The pool gets shallow in a hurry, so finding this type of recruit is the biggest hurdle.

After that? It’s pretty clear that both coaches have been extraordinary at developing their players once they have them on campus. In Corvallis, Casey led the Beavers to consecutive national titles with a team comprised of lightly recruited, and often in-state recruits. Down the road in Eugene, Horton’s ability to build a national contender in just five years is astounding.

Year in and year out, neither OSU nor Oregon can lure recruiting classes as talented as their competition to the south. However, they’ve done an incredible job developing the rosters they were able to secure.

Really, it’s baffling the amount of success each program is having. For the third straight season, the Ducks and Beavers played a late-season series with significant conference title implications. They’re each ranked in the top eight in the country. And in as little as two weeks, there’s a good chance that each could be running onto the field in Omaha.

An Oregon State vs. Oregon national title series in the College World Series? Doesn’t seem so improbable right now.

Trevor Monroe writes and maintains the sports blog Stumptown Sports.

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