Jonathan Sze is a journalism senior and sports reporter and columnist for Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
This has been a pretty eventful season of Big West baseball.
Let’s start with some of the headline news that you may have seen. No.1 UCLA was chasing down the most consecutive Division-I wins (33), sitting at 27 straight as they hosted UC Santa Barbara.
UCLA were fresh off a statement sweep of ranked crosstown rivals USC, and a Rutgers sweep where they struck out 30 batters in game one en route to 49 total for the series. They also scored more than four runs in 17 of their last 18 games, and scored double digit runs more often than not.
The Gauchos shut them out. The best pitching staff in the nation held up against one of the best offenses in the nation.
That wasn’t the most shocking result around the Big West that day. That distinction would go to Long Beach State, at the bottom of the conference, knocking off No. 12 USC 5-3 in Long Beach.
This was a Dirtbag roster with vibes that could not be described as good at any point. My personal favorite quote was from Head Coach TJ Bruce to our student newspaper colleagues at the Long Beach Current, who said, “We’re looking for anybody that can pick up the ball and anybody that can throw strikes and get ahead in counts.”
Capital ‘Y’ yikes! Pitching at its core is throwing the ball for strikes. But they evidently found people who could, as they gave up five hits and two walks on their way to victory.
The season standings have somewhat stabilized since the middle of the season, but there are still some very interesting threads as the season heads towards home.
Cal Poly swept their way into first place after entering in a three-way tie, as UC San Diego and Santa Barbara both dropped games to fall into second and third respectively. Despite being swept by Cal Poly last weekend, CSUN is in the hunt after being picked to finish ninth in the preseason polls. UC Irvine, reigning regular season champions, are in danger of missing the tournament altogether.
The Tritons season is particularly interesting. They can’t buy a win in non conference play, but one of their four non conference wins is No.1 UCLA. Their ace, Steele Murdock, outdueled the top ranked arm in this year’s draft, Jackson Flora, with 17 strikeouts en route to victory.
It’s been a chaotic season, with a ton of surprising results all around the Big West. It also appears that the conference may have been too chaotic for its own good. UC Santa Barbara had the strongest case for an NCAA at-large bid heading into last weekend, but dropping their series to Fullerton might have put the nail in the coffin for the Big West to be a one-bid conference.
Cal Poly has had their fair share of ups and downs. Just in the past couple of weeks, Cal Poly struggled offensively against Santa Barbara and Oregon State before exploding in the UC San Diego series. The Mustangs conference rate stats are at the top in the Big West with a triple slash of .335/.407/.545 on the season.
It’s an offense that needs to stay hot and continue their form from the past two series. UC Irvine, Fullerton and Long Beach are Cal Poly’s Big West final three opponents to close out the season.
This upcoming week might be the hardest for the Mustangs, as the Anteaters are on the outside looking in. The most dangerous teams to play are the ones with everything to lose, UCI needs to win to make the Big West Tournament that by the way is being hosted at Irvine.
Long Beach, on the other hand, is at the very bottom of the standings with nothing to play for except spoilers and pride. There is a strong team there even if their showings have been inconsistent. Remember, they beat top 15 USC 5-3.
There is a little bit of a buffer to avoid the play-in game of the Big West for Cal Poly, who currently sit two games ahead of fourth-place Fullerton. The fourth and fifth seeded teams play a winner take all play-in game on Wednesday before the double elimination bracket starts Thursday.
It cannot be understated how important it is to avoid that play-in game. First, there is no safety net, if you lose that first game you are one and done. You are also very likely to pitch your ace, meaning if you get past the play-in it’s your second starter against the other team’s ace, then your third starter against the other team’s second starter and so on.
Think about last year and the gymnastics Cal Poly’s pitching staff had to perform en route to the championship. Griffin Naess turned in an ace performance to start the tournament. It took heroic bulk showings from Josh Morano and Chris Downs to get to the finale. Jake Torres, at that point the de facto closer, had to start the second game of a Saturday doubleheader. Then the most comedic start of all time by Ethan Marmie in Sunday’s contest to win it all.
Could that jigsaw of pieces have handled another game? I don’t think so. This year with the injuries to Marmie, Leif Palmer and Josh Volmerding it would be a tough ask for this staff to pull a stunt like they did last season.
But on the flipside, heroes are made in May, and seasons are defined by how you perform in the postseason tournament. While some of those heroes from last season are no longer on the team, there are plenty of people waiting to stamp their name into San Luis Obispo lore.
