BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU is No. 7 in the 2016 Collegiate Baseball magazine recruiting rankings released on Monday, marking the ninth time in 10 years the Tigers are in the Top 10 of the survey.
LSU was No. 1 in the recruiting rankings in 2007, 2010 and 2014; No. 3 in 2009; No. 4 in 2012; No. 7 in 2011 and 2015; and No. 10 in 2013.
The 13-man recruiting class includes seven pitchers and six position players. The new Tigers have engaged in conditioning drills and individual workouts with the returning LSU players over the past month, and the team held its first full-squad workout of the fall practice session on Sunday.
“Our new players are a very talented group, and they’re going to push our veteran guys,” said 11th-year LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “The players all know that every year is its own entity, and we’re tasked with putting the very best baseball team on the field. If there’s a young player that can contribute more to the team than a veteran player, then he deserves the chance to play as much as anybody. We try to be fair to everyone and give all our players an equal chance to earn positions in our lineup.”
LSU will enter the 2017 season as the only team to earn an NCAA Tournament National Seed in the each of the past five years, and the Tigers are only the second squad in NCAA history to secure five consecutive National Seeds.
The 2017 season opens on February 17 when the Tigers play host to Air Force in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field.
Arizona State is No. 1 in the 2016 Collegiate Baseball recruiting survey, followed by Ole Miss, North Carolina, Arizona, Auburn, Florida, LSU, TCU, UC Santa Barbara and Washington.