{"id":801,"date":"2009-01-23T09:17:09","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T15:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/homepages.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/2009\/01\/23\/baseball-earns-best-ever-preseason-ranking-at-no-8-in-the-nation\/"},"modified":"2009-01-23T09:17:09","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T15:17:09","slug":"baseball-earns-best-ever-preseason-ranking-at-no-8-in-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/2009\/01\/baseball-earns-best-ever-preseason-ranking-at-no-8-in-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball earns best-ever preseason ranking at No. 8 in the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/volz-jan09.jpg\" alt=\"Kendal Volz\" align=\"right\" \/>We&#8217;re just under a month away from <a href=\"http:\/\/baylorbears.cstv.com\/sports\/m-basebl\/sched\/bay-m-basebl-sched.html\" target=\"_blank\">the start of college baseball season<\/a>, but as a huge baseball fan, it can&#8217;t come quick enough for me. And this year is looking like it will be a good one for the Bears, who are ranked in the top 25 of <a href=\"http:\/\/baylorbears.cstv.com\/sports\/m-basebl\/spec-rel\/012209aac.html\" target=\"_blank\">all four major preseason polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Baseball America<\/em>, the most reputable of the four rankings, has head coach Steve Smith&#8217;s squad <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseballamerica.com\/today\/college\/top-25\/2009\/267456.html#baylor\" target=\"_blank\">ranked No. 8 in the nation<\/a> to start the season &#8212; the program&#8217;s highest-ever preseason mark. The team&#8217;s previous high was a No. 10 ranking to begin the 2000, 2003 and 2005 seasons. That&#8217;s especially encouraging because those just happen to be three of the Bears&#8217; best-ever seasons; Baylor won the Big 12 Conference title in 2000, advanced to a Super Regional in 2003 and not only won the Big 12 in 2005, but advanced to the College World Series for the third time in program history.<\/p>\n<p>And if that&#8217;s not enough to get you out to see the Bears this season, you might also be interested to know that Baylor Ballpark will feature five players who made <a href=\"http:\/\/baylorbears.cstv.com\/sports\/m-basebl\/spec-rel\/110408aac.html\" target=\"_blank\">Baseball America&#8217;s list of the top 100 college prospects for this summer&#8217;s Major League draft<\/a> (more than any other team in the nation). The Bears&#8217; ace, Kendal Volz, was named the No. 6 college prospect in the nation, followed by pitchers Shawn Tolleson (22nd) and Craig Fritsch (37th), right fielder Aaron Miller (62nd) and first baseman Dustin Dickerson (71st).<\/p>\n<p>Season tickets are on sale now; <a href=\"http:\/\/baylorbears.cstv.com\/sports\/m-basebl\/tickets.html\" target=\"_blank\">order yours today<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>Sic \u2019em, Baylor baseball!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;re just under a month away from the start of college baseball season, but as a huge baseball fan, it can&#8217;t come quick enough for me. And this year is looking like it will be a good one for the Bears, who are ranked in the top 25 of all four major preseason polls. Baseball [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athletics","category-honors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}