4 MLB prospects to watch during the 2025 Men’s College World Series
4 MLB prospects The Montgomery Advertiser’s Adam Cole and The Southwest Times Record’s Jackson Fuller are watching during the 2025 Men’s College World Series
OMAHA, Neb. — A week of anticipation is nearly over. Arkansas baseball will open its College World Series run Saturday (6 p.m., ESPN) against LSU.
The Razorbacks and Tigers will play the final game of the first round. They’ll follow UCLA and Murray State on the schedule, with those four teams all sitting together on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bracket.
Here are two things to watch and a prediction for the SEC rematch between Arkansas and LSU.
Can Arkansas baseball get Wehiwa Aloy going?
Outside of supplying five RBIs and two home runs in a winners bracket game against Creighton in the regional, the Golden Spikes nominee and SEC Player of the Year is having a quiet postseason. He’s hitting .277 and had just one hit last weekend against Tennessee.
To win the national title, Arkansas needs its best hitter to rediscover his fine form from the regular season. His first chance at an NCAA Tournament breakthrough comes against an LSU team that held Aloy to a 2-or-12 weekend during the regular season.
A matchup of top lefties in the 2025 MLB Draft
Scouts will be salivating watching Arkansas’ Zach Root and LSU’s Kade Anderson. Both are slated to be high draft picks later this summer, with Anderson potentially going inside the top-five as one of the top college pitchers in the country.
Anderson (10-1, 3.58 ERA) possesses a four-pitch mix with a fastball in the mid 90s and has failed to log six innings once in his last seven starts. That one blip came against Arkansas, who scored three earned runs against the lefty in 5â…” innings.
Root (8-5, 3.59 ERA) has allowed one earned run and struck out 13 batters across 13 innings this postseason. He held LSU to two runs in six innings during the regular season loss. It will be an uphill climb for either team if it has to go into its bullpen early in the contest.
Prediction: Arkansas advances to winners bracket
It feels like Arkansas is playing its best baseball at the right time, and a lot of that has to do with Root. If he can replicate his dominance from the previous two weekends, the Hogs should be able to tame the Tigers and put themselves two wins away from the championship series.
Jackson Fuller covers Arkansas football, basketball and baseball for the Southwest Times Record, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at jfuller@gannett.com or follow him @jacksonfuller16 on X, formerly known as Twitter.Â