The Murph Reloaded, Incoming Devils Ranked No. 1
At least one publication is impressed with the recruiting prowess of Arizona State baseball coach Pat Murphy. Here’s a first look at the Sun Devils’ top-ranked incoming class of 21 freshmen and junior college transfers.
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Arizona State baseball coach Pat Murphy badly needed to reload after losing 21 players from his roster and recruiting class to Major League Baseball this summer. (We took a wild stab at projecting next year’s lineup back in August.)
Well, as it usually does under Murphy, reloading has been achieved. That’s at least according to Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, which ranked ASU’s incoming class the best in the nation this week. Murphy will welcome 15 freshmen and six junior college transfers to the roster this spring, and 12 of them were selected in this summer’s draft.
Quoth ASU recruiting coordinator Josh Holliday: “This is a special recruiting class. We feel we have a deep and talented group of players who will contribute immediately. This group represents what our program stands for.”
So, anyway, here’s the list, ranked in the order in which they were drafted.
- Johnny Coy, OF/IF, 7th round
- Zack MacPhee, IF, 22nd round
- Josh Spence, LHP, 25th round
- Zach Wilson, IF, 26th round
- Brandon Magee, OF, 29th round
- Riccio Torrez, IF, 32nd round
- Carlos Ramirez, C, 34th round (2007 draft)
- Johnny Ruettiger, OF, 35th round
- Jared McDonald, IF, 40th round
- Jordan Swagerty, C/RHP, 44th round
- Abe Ruiz, IF, 47th round
- Drew Maggi, IF, 47th round
- Austin Barnes, IF, undrafted
- Kole Calhoun, OF/LHP, undrafted
- Ray Hanson, RHP, undrafted
- Jeeter Ishida, RHP, undrafted
- Mitchell Lambson, LHP, undrafted
- Jeff Lusardi, OF, undrafted
- Jake Saylor, C, undrafted
- Danny Skelly, LHP, undrafted
- Trask Switzenberg, IF, undrafted
Unfortunately, we can’t offer much more analysis than we did back in August.
We’ll just say that Coy is going to be playing basketball for Herb Sendek, Magee is already playing linebacker for Dennis Erickson, Torrez is the younger brother of incumbent second baseman Raoul Torrez, and Ruettiger is the nephew of Notre Dame’s Rudy. We’re not making that up.
Other than that, we’ll check back with the boys of spring in a few months.
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Several of these guys had their stock in the draft drop a bit either due to injury or because they made it clear they were college bound. Riccio Torrez, Jordan Swaggerty, Abe Ruiz were all highly rated HS kids and probably would have gone earlier if they didn’t want to come to college. Jeeter Ishida and Ray Hanson both had injuries that cost them significant chunks of their senior year — if they can bounce back close to full strength, Hanson in particular, they could be pleasant surprises.
As a Red Sox fan, I don’t know if I’m comfortable rooting for Jeeter Ishida
How long will we have to wait before Murphy says, “We’re a young team”? I expect a team with this level of recruiting class to be competing for Omaha right away.
I agree with David. It’s not for a coach to crap out with excuses, but we know he will. With this kind of talent we should at least compete to go to omaha in the first year whether their young or not.
So wait a minute, before most people were looking at how many of our players were drafted and saying that this year was gonna be a major step back — now suddenly since we’ve got a pretty good recruiting class (which, let’s face it, we get EVERY year), it’s a failure if we don’t go to Omaha? This current crop of players is certainly talented, and will probably keep the Devils in the preseason top 25.
The kids who just left all started their careers in the wake of the miraculous 2005 CWS run that featured Larish, Gosewich, Buck, and Urquedez played pretty well as freshmen, winning 37 games and making it to the first round of the postseason before losing to a pretty good Baylor team on the road in Houston. I could see this team having a similar type of year, but to say this far ahead when most of us know nothing about the players we’ve got that it’s Omaha or bust…man, be a little more realistic than that.
While I haven’t personally seen many of these recruits, I doubt any can truly replace the epic posterior of one “Big booty” Brett Wallace. I mean seriously, say what you want about these kids, but until they bring that kind of junk in the trunk to Packard, I’m not booking any trips to Omaha.