The transfer portal has impacted college baseball just as meaningfully as it has football and basketball. As Exhibit A, consider the 2023 LSU Tigers.
Head coach Jay Johnson was able to lure top talent from other schools, including first baseman Tommy White, who all but rewrote the power records at North Carolina State last season. The ACC Freshman of the Year, White mashed 27 home runs in just 266 plate appearances. He headlined a transfer class for LSU that also included Vanderbilt shortstop Carter Young, Vandy pitcher Christian Little, Air Force pitcher and catcher Paul Skenes, and UCLA pitcher Thatcher Hurd.
It would have been an even more impressive haul if two other players who transferred to LSU — pitcher Dylan Tebrake and shortstop Jack Pineda — had not opted to sign pro contracts after being drafted last summer.
Friday marks the start of the NCAA baseball season, and the mobile sportsbooks still like LSU plenty (and, yes, you can bet on college baseball at any book that has the bandwidth to set lines for it). At DraftKings (the source of all odds in this article), the Tigers — who were just 17-13 in the SEC last year in Johnson's first season — are the second favorite to win the College World Series at +750.