Arizona Baseball signs the No. 3 Recruiting Class for 2018

Still months away from the 2019 Arizona Baseball season, there is plenty to get excited about as the Wildcats sign the No. 3 recruiting class!

2018 was a rather tough season for the Arizona Baseball team. The Wildcats played fairly well but ultimately came up short in a possible bid for the NCAA Tournament.

How close was it? The Wildcats were essentially the first team left out of the tournament. That kind of thing has to agonize any coach, especially Jay Johnson.

Arizona Wildcats

Heading into 2019, expectations are once again high in Tucson and rightfully so. While the Wildcats do lose a number of valuable contributors from last year, they do return quite a few solid pieces in Nick Quintana, Cameron Cannon and Blake Paugh most notably among others.

While the Pac-12 should once again be tough, the talent Arizona has coming in as well as returning, could set up for a great year in 2019!

Coaching in college baseball has to be extremely tough, but it all starts with recruiting. For starters, kids can be drafted out of high school, so if you recruit at a really high level, there’s a chance those players could never end up on a college campus.

If by the mere chance a kid gets drafted but doesn’t sign, he has to go to college for a minimum of three years before being eligible to be drafted again. Beyond that, schools like Arizona only have 11.7 scholarships to work with, despite having teams of about 27 players.

Despite all those challenges, Johnson does very well for himself. So well, that Arizona had the No. 3 recruiting class for 2018 according to Collegiate Baseball!

More impressive is that the Wildcats had six players drafted by MLB teams that will instead come to Arizona.

• OF Ryan Holgate // Davis, Calif. // Davis HS // 32^nd round, Minnesota Twins
• RHP George Arias Jr. // Tucson, Ariz. // Tucson HS // 34^th round, San Diego Padres
• RHP Ian Mejia // Sahuarita, Ariz. // Sahuarita HS // 35^th round, New York Mets
• C Austin Wells // Las Vegas, Nev. // Bishop Gorman HS // 35^th round, New York Yankees
• RHP Bryce Collins // Valencia, Calif. // Hart HS // 39^th round, Minnesota Twins
• LHP Andrew Nardi // Simi Valley, Calif. // Moorpark College // 39^th round, Washington Nationals

That’s some great talent that’s going to be huge for the Wildcats in 2019 and beyond!

The recruiting news is great and makes us all the more excited that baseball season is just around the corner! We are surely excited for a potentially great year! Bear Down, Arizona!