Arizona baseball announced a relatively small signing class Wednesday in anticipation of what’s to come.
If the House vs. NCAA settlement goes through in spring, Division I baseball rosters will be capped at 34 starting in 2026. The Wildcats currently have 40 players on their roster. UA coach Chip Hale expects many to be selected in the 2025 MLB Draft. But he and his staff, led by recruiting coordinator Trip Couch, are emphasizing quality over quantity regardless.
“With the rosters going to 34, it’s been a tough time in the recruiting world,” Hale said. “Do we save room for the portal? Do we save room for junior college?
“(The class) probably would have been a bit bigger. We had to let some guys that we had committed in the past two or three years, before the rules changed, we told them they probably needed to look elsewhere just because 34 was going to be too tough.”
Arizona signed 13 players — 10 who are still in high school and three who are in junior college. Five are from Arizona, including two pairs of prep teammates: pitchers Jack Lafflam and Benton Hickman (Phoenix Brophy College Prep), and pitcher Andrew Jacobs Jr. and catcher Joe Forbes (Glendale Mountain Ridge). Forbes is the younger brother of UA freshman Jackson Forbes.
Lafflam is ranked as the No. 68 overall prospect and No. 17 right-handed pitcher nationally by Perfect Game. Joe Forbes is PG’s No. 1 catcher in Arizona.
Two of the JC players are enrolled at Pima Community College: outfielder Sean Barta and left-hander Maclain Roberts, who’s from Aukland, New Zealand.
Three other high school players are from California. They include pitcher Dylan Wood, who comes from the same high school, Franklin in Elk Grove, as former UA star Chase Davis. Wood is PG’s No. 64 overall prospect and its 15th-ranked right-hander.
Baseball America ranks Arizona’s class 18th in the nation. Its composition is bound to change by the time the 2025-26 school year starts. Hale said the class is “filled with guys who have a chance to get drafted.” But one thing he has learned since becoming Arizona’s coach in 2021 is that those gaps can be filled via the transfer portal and junior-college pickups.
“We were throwing a big net out there (at the beginning),” Hale said. “But it’s not a bad deal not to have enough guys. With the JC season in the spring, and then the portal in the summer, we’re OK. We’re not panicked about that.
“We’ve had guys that we’ve really thought character-wise and baseball-wise are good players, but are they Pac-12 before this and Big 12 competitive? We’ve had to tell (them), or they’ve said, ‘Hey, I need to go somewhere else to play.’ Where with 34, we’re going to have to be pretty right now.”
Another significant change that’s coming: revenue sharing. That was baked into the formula in putting this class together. With national letters of intent no longer in vogue, Hale said that each player signed two contracts: one outlining their revenue-sharing deal and the other their academic aid.
Hale lauded UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois and her staff for clearly outlining what UA baseball’s revenue-sharing model will look like. He declined to give specifics but said it’s a “real generous number” and will be greater, monetarily, than the 11.7 scholarships currently afforded to baseball.
“Desireé and everybody involved over on campus have done an unbelievable job of getting this thing going,” Hale said. “We talk to schools and coaches across the country, and they have no idea what their ... rev-share number is going to be. We have all that stuff.”
Inside pitch
- Arizona’s pitching staff did not allow an earned run in exhibition games against Naranjeros de Hermosillo, Pima and Central Arizona College. While acknowledging that no one threw more than 2-3 innings in any appearance, Hale said “we’ve got 16 guys I’d be very comfortable with right now putting in a game.”
- Infielder Mathis Meurant, a transfer from Cochise College, has been taking groundballs and lifting weights after missing a chunk of the fall following hip surgery. Meurant, who’s from France, is a promising switch-hitter who batted .374 in the spring. “He’s a guy that can really fortify our infield if somebody goes down,” Hale said, “or, who knows, let him have a chance to beat somebody out.”
