Did you know we’re already two weeks into the D1 college season?
Let’s look at the first two weeks of the season for some of the top-ranked candidates to go 1-1, and draw some ridiculous and wildly speculative short-sample-size driven conclusions. 
Actually, more seriously, I wanted to take a bit of time to do the first part of this post, which is to capture direct links for the players in question to have a quick resource I can refer back to. So, hope you enjoy this as well to save you some googling.
I’ll focus on probably just 5-6 players right now, maybe add more if players pop this spring. Obviously can’t do this for the HS guys in the mix like Holliday but if we can find something for them i’ll add it.
Link Block:
- Jace LaViolette, CF, Texas A&M. TAMU stats & Box Scores, MLBPipeline rpt, BA draft rpt
- Jamie Arnold, LHP, Florida State. FSU stats & box Scores, MLBPipeline rpt, BA draft rpt
- Tyler Bremner, RHP, UC Santa Barbara. UCSB stats & box Scores, MLBPipeline rpt, BA draft rpt
- Aiva Arquette, SS, Oregon State. OSU stats & box scores, MLBPipeline rpt, BA draft rpt
- Cam Canarella, CF, Clemson. Clemson stats & box scores, MLBPipeline rpt, BA draft rpt
Two week check-ins:
- LaViolette: starting slow; slashing .211/.444/.737 through two weekend series. Playing CF despite his size/projection to be a corner OF in the pros, batting 2nd. Only has four hits through 6 games but all four were XBH, pushing up his slugging and OPS. They’ve played Elon and Cal Poly on neutral fields, not exactly powerhouses, so a little disappointing of a start.
- Arnold: FSU’s #1/Friday night starter: Can’t ask for a better start: 2 starts, 2 wins, 11IP and just 3 hits allowed. He went 6ip/1h against my alma mater JMU in the opener, then went 5ip/2h against Penn last weekend. Obviously Penn isn’t a baseball powerhouse but JMU can be frisky. In both games he was on a short pitch count and could have gone longer.
- Bremner: UCSB’s #1/Friday starter: went 3 hitless innings to open against Campbell (rumor had it the weather was super cold), then 3 runs in 3IP against a weaker Seattle University team. Keith Law was on hand and wasn’t complementary of what he saw.
- Arquette is on fire to start, playing SS and batting 2nd for OSU. Through two weekends he’s slashing .440/.559/.880 as OSU played in two top-notch tourneys to open their season. There’s definitely something to like about this guy.
- Canarella has been playing CF and batting third for Clemson to start, but got subbed out of one game and missed another early in the season. He had labrum surgery (!!) in the off-season and there was some question if he’d be ready to go in Feb, and its also why some boards have him out of the top of the draft for now. So far, a slow start: .250/.333/.375 with almost no power. It’s also fair to say their opening weekend tournament was about as tough as it could be (they played OK State, Arizona, and Ole Miss). I wonder if he’s really even in the mix for the upper half of the first round.
Where do these players’ teams rank btw? Per D1baseball’s updated rankings post-weekend results,
- TAMU #1 (holding at #1)
- FSU #7 (up from #9)
- UCSB #20 (up one from #21 pre weekend)
- OSU #9 (down from #7 before weekend)
- Clemson #13 (up 1 from #14 pre weekend)
So all these players are playing for top teams in solid divisions, which guarantees good competition when we get to conference play.
So, that’s a quick check in. Arnold and Arquette look great, LaViolette starting slow, Canarella may still be hurt, and Bremner seems like he may drop out of 1-1 contention unless he starts blowing away sub-par competition.