I’ll say this upfront: There’s going to be a fair amount of numbers in this article, and some of those numbers aren’t going to look all that great, because Troy played a tough schedule and dealt with injuries throughout the year. But make no mistake, this Troy team is a deserving one of being one of the last 8 college baseball teams standing this postseason. As an anonymous coach told D1Baseball, “You can be a bad team and have a great weekend in the regular season, but you can’t be a bad team and go on a three-week run like they are.”
Troy has been a pesky Sun Belt team for years now, but this year, they were right up there with the top of the conference and are on a pretty magical run, winning their first Division 1 Regional and Super Regional (and thanks to Little Rock coming out of the Hattiesburg regional, Troy got to host their first Super Regional, too) in program history on their way to getting here. They were one of the last teams in the field as an at-large team, but despite their 32-29 record as a mid-major looking maybe less than impressive, this team played one of the toughest schedules in the country — by RPI, their strength of schedule was 8th, with all 7 teams ahead of them being high-end SEC squads who boosted their numbers by playing each other in weekend series. They racked up a midweek win against Georgia early in the year, but really came on in a 14-5 finish to their season that included a midweek win against Alabama and a game win against Southern Miss. They finished tied for 3rd in a 5-bid Sun Belt before beating Florida twice to come out of the Gainesville Regional.
This Troy team is a pretty balanced squad, with pretty high-end talent and decent team results both at the plate and on the mound. Offensively, the headliner is catcher Jimmy Janicki, one of few homegrown players on this roster. Janicki has absolutely raked this season, putting together a slash line of .341/.413/.648. He leads the team in doubles (24), home runs (19), RBI (85), and OPS (1.061). He’s one of the best players remaining in the tournament, even though he hasn’t been up to his standard in the postseason — he’s gone just 6/21 through their 7 games, including 1/9 in their Super Regional sweep of Little Rock. His teammates have picked him up, though, and if he’s going to get back into his groove in Omaha, this offense could go from good to scary in a hurry. Other guys to look out for include right fielder Aaron Piasecki (.346/.454/.539, 24:39 K-BB), who’s got some Kane Kepley in his game as an on-base machine batting leadoff with a flat swing and more than one helping of grit; Indiana transfer third baseman Josh Pyne (.291/.372/.496, 23 2B), who is a doubles machine but strikes out a lot; and junior college transfer DH Jabe Boroff (.264/.393/.670), a hard swinger who missed time with injury and a really slow start to the season but has been on fire in the postseason. He’s got 15 extra base hits out of his 24 total knocks and they’re calling him “Jabe Ruth,” which I must say is an incredible bit.
As a team, the Trojans slash .290/.399/.484 and have hit 93 home runs — the on-base and average numbers rank in the 60-70 range nationally while the home runs rank near top-20, with slugging somewhere in the middle. So this is a team that relies on home runs to score, and to their credit they do that pretty successfully to the tune of 7.2 runs per game. They’re also really, at times detrimentally, aggressive at the plate — they record 1.6 strikeouts per walk, a similar mark to USC and not one that compares favorably to the rest of the field. This isn’t a team that runs a lot, with their stolen bases leader being CF Steven Meier with 11 on 20 attempts. And, oddly, they have 3 guys with at least 17 hit-by-pitches. It’s also a very good defensive lineup — as a team, they’re fielding at a .977 rate and converted four double plays in the game that sent them to Omaha.
Troy has a couple of decent starters in senior duo Tommy Egan (R, 5.38 ERA) and Benjamin Stubbs (L, 4.93 ERA). Egan usually pitches first for them and he’s a crafty guy, with a fastball/cutter combo that doesn’t overpower with velocity but does keep you guessing, and then a curveball/slider off-speed mix. He’s got 99 strikeouts and 32 walks in 87 innings pitched, and threw 7.1 strong frames against Little Rock last weekend. Stubbs has a more typical arsenal, headlined by a fastball that sits 94-96 with average life but good location. He doesn’t miss as many bats as Egan does, but an 83:37 K-BB is still plenty respectable. Hayden Smith has emerged as a third starter for them and has been putting up the best numbers of the bunch lately, albeit with a smaller sample size. He’s got a 2.94 ERA and a .226 batting average against compared to the other two being around .265, but he doesn’t have the strikeout stuff or the zone command of his compatriots, shown by a 28:21 K:BB in 49 innings.
All that said, the real strength of the Trojans’ pitching staff, in my opinion, is in the bullpen. Zach Crotchfelt (L, 3.50 ERA, 74:22 K-BB) is a relief ace who spent time at Auburn and Texas Tech before landing with the Trojans for his senior year, and he’s a flamethrower who’s playing his best baseball of late. Closer Dylan Alonso (R, 4.63 ERA, .204 BAA) is another hard-throwing reliever with a 95-97 heater to go with a slider/curve breaking ball mix; he’s a legit draft prospect this year. Cooper Ellingworth and Noah Thigpen have been hit around a little more, but they’ve eaten a ton of innings for the Trojans as well; they’re dangerous if they get run support. And freshman Matt Dill could be a wild card, with a respectable ERA of 5.50 and other stats that make him look like a real strike-thrower — the kind who might not wow you, but could also get through 3 innings in a blink.
It’s a tough world for mid-majors in college baseball, and Troy coach Skylar Meade has done a really admirable job building this roster basically anew through smart transfer portal adds from just about every level of the sport, with Janicki as the centerpiece. This has been a fun team to watch and they’re capable of doing damage, especially with the bats in the top half of their lineup. While neither their offense nor their pitching is necessarily the best in the field, Troy certainly has a team that’s plenty good enough to compete with anybody, and a star who’d be one of the 3 best players on any of the teams in Omaha.
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