STILLWATER, OK — On paper, this looks like it has a chance to be Josh Holliday’s best team yet in Stillwater, a well-rounded club that will do a lot of things well. But nothing stands out more than the heavy artillery in the lineup, which looks like one of the most powerful in all of college baseball — even though OSU lost its only double-digit home run hitter from a year ago (Christian Encarnacion-Strand), along with three of the other four hitters who logged more than five homers in 2021.

It starts with sophomore third baseman Nolan McLean, who came in as a blue-chip two-sport recruit but has now given up football to focus solely on baseball. After posting a .936 OPS and eight homers in just 139 at-bats as a true freshman, McLean impressed in the Cape Cod League this summer, and this fall he looks like an emerging superstar. A 6-foot-3, 207-pound righthanded hitter, McLean controls the strike zone very well, but he also has enormous raw power and the ability to drive the ball with authority to all fields, as he did in Saturday’s scrimmage, hitting a three-run homer to center field that exited the bat at 103 mph, then going oppo on a 93 mph heater for a solo shot that exited at 105. McLean spent the summer playing for Josh’s father Tom Holliday at Chatham, and the elder Holliday compared McLean’s power bat to that of Oklahoma State legend Pete Incaviglia, whom Tom coached in the 1980s at OSU.

But McLean’s game isn’t just about the bat. He’s also...