In a bit of "news" that's completely unsurprising to anyone who follows WSU baseball closely, coach Donnie Marbut announced today that a 15-man freshman class -- which includes unsigned major league draft picks Ben Roberts, Tanner Chleborad and Joe Pistorese -- has officially joined the team.

All of these guys signed letters of intent last year, but per Marbut's policy, the class was not announced until today.

Roberts, an outfielder, was a seventh round pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He'll almost certainly compete for a starting spot immediately. Cleborad is a lanky right-hander who profiles as a future ace of the staff; he was selected in the 24th round by the Seattle Mariners. Pistorese is a left-handed pitcher who was selected in the 44th round by the Chicago White Sox.

They join a squad that lost only a few major contributors and got a boost when outfielder Derek Jones and first baseman Taylor Ard -- the number three and four hitters last year -- failed to come to terms with the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox.

Full class listed after the jump.

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Well hello there, strangers! I won't bore you with too many details of my absence, other than to say I was out of the country for a week at Malibu, Canada, with Young Life only to return home two weeks ago just in time to move without the help of a sick wife.

Needless to say, this has not left a lot of time for writing.

However, I was relaxing on the couch tonight for the first time in days -- playing some NCAA 12 and watching the news on Twitter roll by as the deadline to sign selections from the first-year player draft came and went -- when I thought to myself, "Huh, I wonder if any of the Cougs ended up signing?"

The answer? Only Adam Conley, who came to terms with the Florida Marlins a couple of days ago, making this an incredible day for WSU baseball -- one worth staying up just a little bit later to write about.

The list of drafted players who failed to reach contracts with their clubs starts with familiar names Derek Jones and Taylor Ard, but also includes incoming freshmen Ben Roberts, Tanner Chleborad and Joe Pistorese. And it changes what once looked like a possible rebuilding year into a year WSU just might make a push to get back into the postseason.

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All right, time to put this puppy to bed.

We first looked at what wasn't behind the failure of the baseball team this past season (the offense), and then looked at what was (the run prevention). Now it's time to look ahead.

Is there hope for recovery in 2012? The answer is yes. (Isn't it always?)

Before we get into specifics, though, there's a very simple reason to believe that the team will get back to its winning ways: There are actually "winning ways" to get back to. Donnie Marbut has built a solid program in Pullman, and one bump in the road does not mean that the program is suddenly heading into an inevitable tailspin of football-like proportions.

This season is only a "failure" in the sense that it didn't live up to expectations -- I mean, when I was in school, we should have been so lucky to have a .500 baseball team. Heck, they weren't even in the Pac-10 when I started. So it's not like it's going to take some sort of major overhaul to bring the postseason back into the conversation.

Let's talk about how this team might get better.

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A week ago, we examined an objective way to compare the 2010 and 2011 WSU baseball seasons in an effort to determine just how the Cougars fell so far short of expectations this year.

Through our use of Weighted On Base Average, we were able to determine, with some degree of certainty, what it wasn't -- namely, the offense. Although the Cougs' run production was way down, that made them just like everyone else, thanks to the new NCAA-mandated bat standards.

In fact, a pretty good argument could be made that the 2011 offense was actually better than its predecessor. But even if you aren't willing to go that far, there's really no way to argue it was any worse than a version that was good enough to lead WSU to within a game of an NCAA Super Regional, meaning we just can't lay the blame at the feet of the bats. The offense was good enough.

Which leaves us looking at run prevention. And boy, was the run prevention awful.

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With the first pitch of the championship of the College World Series set for tonight, now's a good time to take one last look back at WSU's baseball season to try and figure out just what went wrong for the Cougars, who fell far short of their expectations in 2011.

Periodically throughout the year, coach Donnie Marbut took issue with his team's attitude, leadership and preparation. He said the Cougars "embarrassed" themselves after the Fresno State series. He also repeatedly questioned his team's intensity, saying they "lacked urgency," and questioned whether he'd gone too soft on them in practice.

Marbut's a baseball man through-and-through, so it's not surprising that he regularly looked to intangibles to explain just how it was that a team that had its sights set on Omaha and the eight-team CWS couldn't even get into the conversation for a third consecutive regional berth.

But we like things more concrete than that around here. That's not to dismiss what Marbut said -- he's a highly successful baseball coach who has won games with his philosophy, and if he says this year's team wasn't as focused or intense, then I believe him.

However, we can't measure those things. And since we don't watch them practice, we don't know their personalities or work ethics, which means we'd just be aimlessly speculating. If you've been around here for any length of time, you know we avoid that as much as possible.

So, we're left with statistical analysis to shed some light on what went wrong and offer at least a partial explanation of why it happened. But much more than some sort of second-rate substitute, the stats paint a very clear picture of what happened this season. And the conclusions might surprise you.

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With half of the MLB First-Year Player Draft now in the books, WSU has already equaled its total of players drafted in 2010 when Derek Jones, Taylor Ard and Matt Argyropoulos joined Adam Conley as Cougars who will have the opportunity to move on to the professional ranks.

While Conley, a junior selected in the second round by the Florida Marlins, will certainly turn pro and Argyropoulos has exhausted his eligibility, both Jones (junior) and Ard (redshirt sophomore) indicated today they have not decided whether to leave school to begin their careers.

In what was a little bit of a surprise, Jones was picked in the 13th round by the Baltimore Orioles. The depressed offensive environment brought on by the new bats hit Jones as hard as anyone this year, as the left fielder saw a pretty significant dip in his numbers, falling from .309/.393./.581 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) as a sophomore to .275/.370/.477 as a junior. His home runs dropped from 12 to eight.

Interestingly, he also struggled mightily in the Cape Cod League last summer, hitting .211/.280/.289 in 30 games with a wood bat, but the Orioles must have seen something they liked. Translation? Here's to guessing Jones is as good as gone, because he'll get some bonus money for the round he was selected in and even a big senior season might not move him to a significantly higher round.

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Washington State left-hander Adam Conley has been picked up on the second day of the 2011 MLB Draft.  With the 72nd pick, the Florida Marlins selected Conley.

Conley becomes the highest Cougar drafted since Scott Hatteberg went in the compensation round back in 1991. Aaron Sele was also selected in the first round that year.

Conley was sought after because he possesses what may be the most sought-after commodity in baseball: A left arm that can hit the nineties on a radar gun (as evidenced by the Seattle Mariners surprise pick of Danny Hultzen).  It doesn't hurt that Conley has excellent control, walking just 27 men in 108 innings pitched.

His 3.50 ERA may not be very shiny, especially in a year where runs seemed harder than ever to come by in college baseball, but it is worth noting that Conley pitched in front of a below-average defense (as evidenced by an inflated .342 BABIP) and against an above-average conference.  On collegesplits.com, they have done some park and schedule adjusting to their statistics and those of you who are here searching for any information you can (i.e. Marlins fans), will be happy to know they paint a much rosier picture.

Conley's park and schedule adjusted ERA drops to 2.83 and his FIP comes down from 4.00 to 3.90.  His batting average against comes down from .277 to .228.  Basically, he put up some solid numbers against some of the best competition there is in college baseball.  So that is something positive to take away.

What it really comes down to for the Marlins is what Conley has to offer now for them to build upon in the future.  He's got that aforementioned low-90s fastball and solid control.  He was also a workhorse during his junior year at Washington State, throwing 108 innings in 16 starts and frequently getting into the eighth inning or later.  He has yet to develop a solid breaking ball as an "out" pitch, and if he does he has the potential to continue to strike out batters with the frequency he did in college (6.92 K/9).

For those of you East Coasters who may scoff at the selection because you don't trust the program he is coming from, you should know that Washington State has had a former player in the Major League's for 63 straight years, the third-longest streak in the country.

The big day has arrived for almost-certain-to-be-gone WSU pitcher Adam Conley -- the first round of the MLB First-Year Player Draft begins tonight at 4 p.m. PDT, and mock drafts abound as the hour draws closer.

It's unlikely Conley will hear his name called in the first round, but immediately following those initial picks, the draft will continue with the "sandwich" round, which involves picks awarded to teams as compensation for losing free agents. With 27 of those in addition to the 33 in the first round, there will be 60 high school and draft-eligible college players selected tonight -- and there's a decent chance Conley will be one of them.

In fact, SB Nation's Minor League Ball thinks there's a good chance Conley will be comfortably among tonight's picks. Here's what author John Sickels wrote back on May 9:

53) Blue Jays (for Kevin Gregg): Adam Conley, LHP, Washington State: Power lefty converted to rotation after relieving last year. Could easily go 10 spots higher.

Apparently, he convinced himself with that last line: His most recent mock draft on June 1 has Conley going 42nd to the Tampa Bay Rays.

And lest you think that's just grasping at straws, in this article for The Olympian, Conley told freelancer Howie Stalwick that the Rays are one of the teams who have been in contact with him, along with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees.

You can follow the draft tonight at MLB.com, and I believe it will also be televised on MLB Network if you get that. You can also head over to ESPN.com, home of Prospect Insider's Jason Churchill, who was kind enough to give us some of his time on the podcast last week.

We'll have a post up when Conley's name is selected, whether that's today or tomorrow.