There might be a few inches of snow on the ground in Indiana this morning, but it is officially baseball season. Purdue is just four days away from its home opener at Alexander Field, and this year it is a Big Ten series that will begin the home slate. The expansion of the conference to the West Coast has affected baseball. There are now 17 baseball schools in the league, and the likes of UCLA, USC, and Oregon mean that the league is even stronger.
The additions have also expanded the league slate
from 24 games to 30, giving each team two extra three-game series in conference play. This season Purdue will host Oregon, Penn State, Illinois, Ohio State, and Indiana in league play and it will travel to Maryland, Michigan State, Northwestern, USC, and Iowa. The Iowa series will not be on campus in Iowa City, but instead it will be in Des Moines at the home of the Iowa Cubs.
We’re now three weekends into the season and Purdue is off to a respectable start. After dropping the season opener to Portland in Texas Purdue bounced back to take the series by winning the last two games. Purdue then lost a midweek game at Rice before playing in the Round Rock Classic.
The Round Rock Classic might be where Purdue’s season turned around. They lost the opener to Southern Miss 5-4 on a walk-off, but the Golden Eagles are currently 10-1 and the No. 1 team in the RPI. Purdue then grabbed two very big wins over Baylor (RPI 17) and top 20 Oregon State (RPI 35), which are among the two biggest non-conference wins during the tenure of Greg Goff.
This past weekend Purdue was in Holly Springs, North Carolina where it swept a four-game series from Marist 9-4, 11-10, 8-2, and 18-1. The first game of Saturday’s doubleheader was a wild one, as Purdue won on a walk-off wild pitch after a five run ninth inning. Purdue scored 11 runs on just 7 hits thanks to 11 walks and 5 hit batters.
Purdue has gotten an excellent performance from freshman Westin Boyle. He is batting .447 on the young season with 16 RBI to lead Purdue in both categories. CJ Richmond has also been good, batting .359 with a team high 3 home runs and 9 RBI. On the mound Jarvis Evans has been a solid starter and is 2-0 with a 4.02 ERA. Austin Klug has been a surprise with a 2.84 ERA and a 2-1 record in two starts. Zach Erdman and Cole Van Assen have done well in starts as well.
All this has Purdue at a decent 8-3 going into conference play at home this weekend against an Oregon team that is currently ranked in the top 25 nationally. They are also lead by a familiar face in former Purdue coach Mark Wasikowski. Wasikowski was only at Purdue three season, but he authored a huge turnaround in year one from 10 wins to 29 before Purdue went 38-21 in 2018. That year the Boilers made the NCAA Tournament for only the third time in program history and it even won a game once there.
So far the West Coast schools have looked the best from the Big Ten. UCLA is a legit national title contender at 9-2 and they have been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 all year depending on which poll you look at (college baseball has like five polls each week). They just had a tremendous weekend beaten Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Mississippi State, who are all top ranked teams. They have also swept a ranked TCU team. They are the heavy league favorite, but could be undone simply because they have to play the other West Coast schools who are really good.
USC is currently 11-0 and swept the same Rice squad that beat Purdue early on. Oregon enters this weekend at 10-1 with its best win coming over Vanderbilt, but they play Oregon State Tuesday night in Eugene before coming to West Lafayette.
Those are the league favorites, but Purdue is just behind them with the next best record at 8-3. Michigan is 6-4, but has a solid top 25 RPI. Iowa entered the season with strong expectations, but has struggled to maintain consistency in a 5-4 start against a tough slate.
According to D1baseball UCLA, Oregon, and USC were picked in the preseason to make the NCAAs, with UCLA and Oregon as regional hosts. Purdue already has a win over Oregon State, who was also picked as a potential host. That is a win that is going to be interesting all season because Oregon State baseball was a major casualty of the Pac-12 exploding. The Beavers are a true national power with three national championships in the last 20 years. They are now officially independent in baseball, so they are playing a national schedule and they have tried to front load it with good teams before conference play begins for everyone else.
So what does this all mean for Purdue. Well, the Boilermakers’ performance in Round Rock was huge. The wins over Baylor and Oregon State pretty much erased the bad loss against Portland. Losing a midweek game against Rice is not damaging, and the loss to Southern Miss is more of a missed opportunity at this point. Unlike the last few seasons where Purdue got fat off of a weak early schedule there are some legit decent wins already on the slate.
Purdue needs a top 12 finish in the league to reach the Big Ten Tournament for the first time since 2024. That seems very doable. Washington, Penn State, Indiana, and Michigan State are off to slow starts. As far as being a potential NCAA team, a lot of that likely relies on how well the Boilers do in the series against Oregon this weekend and at USC later. They are the two best teams left on the schedule by a wide margin, and if the Boilers can go something like 3-3 against them it will help tremendously.
The Boilers also have an advantage of a series the first week of May against Murray State. The Racers were a surprise team in last year’s College World Series and they are off to a 10-2 start this year as well.
To be in the discussion for the NCAAs I would estimate Purdue needs 35 to 38 regular season wins, with probably 18 or so in the Big Ten. Last year Purdue was 31-23, but a dismal 11-19 in conference play. That means this weekend at home against Oregon is a huge opportunity to make a statement.
