D1baseball's 2020 preseason All-American college baseball teams

Reigning national champion Vanderbilt leads college baseball with four players on D1Baseball’s Preseason All-America teams. Second-ranked Vanderbilt is also the only program to place three players on the first team: third baseman Austin Martin, starting pitcher Kumar Rocker and closer Tyler Brown. Another Vanderbilt pitcher, Mason Hickman, landed on the second team.

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A pair of Pac-12 programs landed two players apiece on the Preseason All-America first team. Slugging first baseman Spencer Torkelson and shortstop Alika Williams both made the first team from No. 9 Arizona State, while five-tool outfielder Garrett Mitchell and closer Holden Powell made it from No. 14 UCLA.

Top-ranked Louisville and 10th-ranked Mississippi State each placed three players on the three Preseason All-America teams, though Louisville ace Reid Detmers was the only first teamer of the bunch. Programs that notched two Preseason All-Americans include No. 3 Miami, No. 7 Arkansas, No. 11 LSU, No. 13 Michigan, No. 15 Duke, No. 18 Wake Forest and No. 23 North Carolina.

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The SEC leads all conferences with 18 Preseason All-America spots, followed by the ACC (13) and the Pac-12 (five). Eleven out of the 14 SEC schools are represented on the three Preseason All-America teams. The SEC also leads all conferences with seven players on the first team, followed by the Pac-12 with four. Overall, 13 difference conferences are represented on the three teams.

Four members of the 2019 postseason All-America first team carried over to the 2020 Preseason All-America first team: Martin, Detmers, New Mexico State’s Nick Gonzales and East Carolina’s Alec Burleson. Three other players moved up from the second team at the end of last season to the first team this preseason: Torkelson, Powell and Georgia ace Emerson Hancock. And three more players jumped from the third team last June to the first team heading into this spring: Texas A&M ace Asa Lacy, North Carolina slugger Aaron Sabato and Tennessee outfielder Alerick Soularie.

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D1Baseball’s editors select the Preseason All-America Teams with one guiding principle in mind: to identify the best and most valuable college baseball players for the 2020 season. Past performance and future potential factor into the deliberations, but the goal was neither to identify the best future major leaguers nor to reward the players who have put up the gaudiest numbers in past seasons (particularly since the level of competition varies significantly from one conference to another). The objective was to select the players who would provide the most value for a team that wanted to win the College World Series in 2020 — the players who are best equipped to perform against elite college competition this spring.

First team

Second team

Third team

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