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UCLA Baseball Multimedia 2018 Season Preview

By Nathan Eberhardt

OMAHA, NE - JUNE 25: Head coach John Savage of the UCLA Bruins stands in the dugout before playing the Mississippi State Bulldogs during game two of the College World Series Finals on June 25, 2013 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
OMAHA, NE - JUNE 25: Head coach John Savage of the UCLA Bruins stands in the dugout before playing the Mississippi State Bulldogs during game two of the College World Series Finals on June 25, 2013 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) /
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OMAHA, NE – JUNE 25: Head coach John Savage of the UCLA Bruins stands in the dugout before playing the Mississippi State Bulldogs during game two of the College World Series Finals on June 25, 2013 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
OMAHA, NE – JUNE 25: Head coach John Savage of the UCLA Bruins stands in the dugout before playing the Mississippi State Bulldogs during game two of the College World Series Finals on June 25, 2013 at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images) /

The UCLA baseball team returns and Go Joe Bruin has your mutlimedia preview complete with a full analysis of the team brought to you by the UCLA B Team podcast.

The 2018 UCLA Baseball team is, in many ways, the culmination of a four-year journey. The 2015 team entered the postseason as the number one team in the nation, maximizing the John Savage model of relying on pitching and defense at the expense of hitting – a gamble which came back to bite them with a surprise elimination in the Regional round.

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The 2016 team was primed to build on their predecessors’ success but got derailed by key injuries and missed the postseason all together. The 2017 team was in full rebuild mode, laden with freshmen, and they surprised by even making the postseason.

The 2018 team gets key pieces back from injury, has a ton of talented and experienced sophomores, and appears (after a two-year stint in the wilderness) ready to reclaim its spot among the nation’s elite.

I had the distinct pleasure of talking with UCLA Baseball superfan Ryan Rosenblatt this week on the UCLA B Team Podcast. I won’t rehash everything we said here, but I encourage you to listen to the episode, which I’ve embedded here. I learned more from Ryan about this program in 50 minutes than I had in the previous three years of writing about UCLA Baseball for Go Joe Bruin. Give it a listen:

The UCLA B Team UCLA Baseball Preview

I do want to share some salient items with you, namely starters, key dates, projected finishes and the full game and TV schedule.