TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida State baseball team has always been one of the best teams in the nation under Mike Martin in regards to recruiting. To the surprise of nobody, Martin’s 2008 class is no different.

The Seminoles have the second-best recruiting class in the nation according to Collegiate Baseball and will welcome in 20 newcomers to the team that includes 11 pitchers, of which four are left-handed, four infielders, three outfielders and three catchers.

While 15 of the ‘Noles’ 20 recruits were playing high school ball last season, five players make their way over to Tallahassee by way of transfer. Headlining the transfer class are infielders Tony Delmonico and Stephen Halford. Expect both Delmonico and Halford to contribute immediately to the team with last season’s infielders Tony Thomas, Jr. and Mark Hallberg opting out of school early for the Major League Draft.

Delmonico comes to FSU from the University of Tennessee, where he was arguably the Volunteers’ best player last season. As a sophomore, Delmonico led the team in home runs (9), RBIs (49), walks (35) and runs scored (53). Adding a productive player like Delmonico should make the losses of Thomas and Hallberg much more bearable.

Halford, meanwhile, transfers in from UNC-Wilmington. Halford played every game for UNCW at the shortstop position last season as a freshman and was outstanding at the plate, hitting .352 and scoring 52 runs while setting a freshman school record with a 12-game hitting streak.

The new class is clearly laden with pitchers and rightly so. The Tribe lost their top two starting pitchers from last season in Bryan Henry and Michael Hyde and a bulk of their pitchers from the bullpen. Headlining the next generation of pitchers for the Seminoles are Taiwan Easterling and John Gast.

Easterling hails from Hattiesburg, Miss. and was named Mr. Baseball for the state of Mississippi in 2007. While Easterling was a standout pitcher at Oak Grove High School, he also did well swinging the bat as he hit .455 with 13 home runs and 56 RBIs en route to leading Oak Grove to a state championship. Easterling turned away a deal with the Florida Marlins to come play his collegiate ball at Florida State. He was taken by the Marlins with the 196th overall pick in this year’s draft.

Gast was one of the most feared pitchers in the state of Florida last season while at Lake Brantley High School as he struck out 85 batters in just 57.2 innings of work while posting a 1.18 earned run average. Gast is another Seminole who decided to turn away from the pros and come to college after the Texas Rangers took him with the 170th pick in the 2007 MLB Draft.

Easterling and Gast weren’t the only two FSU signees to turn their shoulders to the major leagues as three other ‘Noles in pitchers Mike McGee, Michael Martinez and Mark Peterson all were drafted by MLB teams but decided to go to college. McGee was taken in the 37th round by the Chicago Cubs, Martinez in the 43rd round by the Washington Nationals and Peterson in the 50th round by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

With such a tremendously deep and talented recruiting class, Martin has very good reason to be optimistic about the future of his Florida State baseball program and feels his assistants did a great job in helping the Tribe earn such a lofty recruit ranking.

“We are very proud of this ranking,” Martin said. “Jamey Shouppe and Michael (Martin, Jr.) have done an outstanding job of bringing these young men in here. I think that the two transfers in (Tony) Delmonico (University of Tennessee) and (Stephen) Halford (UNC Wilmington) had a lot do to with that as well as John Gast (5th round pick) and Taiwan Easterling (6th round pick) being selected in the top six rounds of the Major League Baseball Draft but deciding to come to Florida State.”