SEC Baseball is a brand new beast for the young Texas Baseball squad

When Texas and Oklahoma decided to make their move to the SEC what feels like a lifetime ago, the motivation for the move mostly stemmed from hopes of making a super conference in football, a group of teams that will dominate national markets and bring every school a boatload of money.

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But both of these schools play over 15 other sports, all drastically impacted by the move. While the expectation of basketball competition lessening was a far cry from reality, Texas’ baseball program knew exactly what it was getting into when joining the Southeastern Conference.

While the SEC is known for being a historically dominant football conference, there may not be a single sport these southeastern (if you can even call them that anymore) schools monopolize than baseball.

The SEC has won five straight national championships dating back to 2019. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, Jacob Young and Florida probably would’ve made it six. But the most impressive part of that stat is that there were zero repeat champions.

While Vanderbilt, South Carolina and LSU have all made multiple national title runs since the Longhorns last dogpiled in 2005, those five title contenders included teams like Ole Miss, last year’s Tennessee team and Texas’ weekend opponent in Mississippi State.

Currently, the SEC has the four highest-ranked teams in the sport, including eight of the top 13 and a whopping 12 teams in the top 25. The ACC, the next best conference, has six teams ranked.

The SEC truly has everything in this sport. World class facilities, the best environments on gameday, and a disgusting amount of talent that features multiple future MLBers. The SEC had seven first-round picks in 2024, including multiple high schoolers previously committed to schools, and five of the top fifteen college prospects for the ’25 draft hail from the SEC.

So with a matchup in Starkville this weekend, what can Texas fans expect to see different in the level of play when watching these SEC powerhouses, as opposed to the lighter early season competition?

Pitching talent will be the first thing that jumps off the page as the Longhorns work deeper into the season. While the Longhorns have had the benefit of facing pitchers from Santa Clara and Dartmouth, the Longhorns will be tasked with facing teams like Florida, a team that is fourth in the nation in strikeouts per nine innings.

In fact, the conference holds five of the top six teams in terms of punching out batters, the most efficient and sought after outs in the sport. The SEC features pitchers like Tennessee’s Liam Doyle, who has struck out 47 batters in four appearances. Doyle is drawing comparisons to Paul Skenes with potentially the best fastball in the sport, now hitting around 98 MPH. That’s fast for the majors.

If you were to make a comparison to football, pitching talent is like the trenches. You can never have too many arms, and the teams with the best pitching usually hail from the SEC, and are usually the most dominant. But the conference still has Malik Nabers and Devonta Smiths in its batters. A&M’s Jace Laviolette was maybe the best hitter in the sport last season and returned to College Station before likely being a top-five pick in the draft.

Mississippi State features their own stud in first baseman Hunter Hines, a preseason All-SEC first team selection. Even though it’s been a little bit of down year so far, Hines has exhibited some serious pop in the past with 16 home runs in 2024. The Bulldogs team itself isn’t ranked, but they are an advanced analytics darling, and head coach Chris Lemonis is a former national champion.

Thankfully for Texas fans, preparation for this task has been done. Potentially one of the biggest reasons for the firing of David Pierce in favor of Jim Schlossnagle was Schloss’ SEC experience and Pierce’s lack thereof. Schlossnagle has put a strong emphasis on recruiting and developing baseball players that look like major leaguers. Take a look at what he’s done for Will Gasparino’s physique this year, or how strong Dylan Volantis has been to start the season.

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Texas is far from scared of this opportunity, the Longhorns have been preparing every single athletic program for these seasons. But don’t take losses in a conference like this too hard. Tennessee lost 13 games en route to a national championship last season, just one season after losing north of 20 games in 2023. Expectations for Texas to sweep any series in the SEC would be lofty, but this weekend will be a true test to see just how far Schlossnagle has brought this team in less than nine months.