Overview:
Andrew Checketts, on the brink of UCSB’s record for baseball coaching wins, will send All-American Tyler Bremner to the mound for Friday’s season opener against Campbell University
UC Santa Barbara baseball coach Andrew Checketts has the GOAT by the horns.
His 453 coaching victories in 13 seasons has brought him to within 32 of Bob Brontsema’s record as the Greatest Of All Time for Gaucho baseball.
Checketts has averaged nearly 42 in the last five full seasons, so a new record should be spinning long before this year’s last dance.
But his wise-cracking family has been getting his goat of late, diabolically quizzing him whenever he returns home from a preseason intrasquad game.
“They always laugh at me and go, ‘Did you win the scrimmage today?’” he told Noozhawk.
No one knows his fretful perfectionism better than wife Michelle and their three kids.
“I haven’t won one yet,” Checketts admitted. “Whatever side of the ball doesn’t win, you go home worried about it.
“My family says my glass is typically not even half-full … There’s just a little backwash at the bottom of it.”
The Gauchos will get their first taste of real action when Campbell University of Buies Creek, North Carolina, visits Caesar Uyesaka Stadium for a season-opening, three-game series beginning at 4:05 p.m. Friday.
Preseason prognosticators say Checketts’ trophy cup should runneth over this season. The Gauchos are listed in every national preseason Top 25 ranking.
Three polls — D1 Baseball, the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and the USA Today Baseball Coaches Poll — all have them slotted at No. 22.
Baseball America has them just one spot lower at No. 23.
Nine of the 11 Big West Conference coaches voted UCSB last week as the preseason favorite to win its fourth league championship in the last six full seasons.
You can probably identify one of the two coaches who voted for UC Irvine.
Checketts regards preseason polls — and the individual awards that go with them — to be nothing better than a “curse.”
“I was hoping nobody would get nominated for anything,” he said with a laugh.
“We do have enough high-end arms that we should have a chance on the mound,” he continued. “But will we have the ability to catch it and play defense and put runs on the board?
“I think there are enough pieces there, but we’ve got to go do it.
“And it’s hard to go home feeling like you’ve won a scrimmage. You see all the holes and the warts, and you’re trying to fix those.”
Perfect Pitch
Three of his pitchers were among the 11 players that made the coaches’ Preseason All-Big West Team: Starters Tyler Bremner and Jackson Flora, and reliever Cole Tryba.
The problem with prognosticators, Checketts said, is that they rely entirely on the previous season.
Bremner does come with an impressive résumé. Both his win-loss record of 11-1 and earned-run average of 2.54 as a sophomore ranked among the nation’s top 10 last year. His 104 strikeouts in 88⅔ innings led the Big West.
He passed the eye test of many Major League Baseball scouts when he pitched three hitless innings for Team USA’s collegiate team in its July 2 Friendship Series victory over Chinese Taipei.
D1 Baseball predicts that Bremner will be the first collegiate pitcher picked in this summer’s MLB draft. Baseball America ranks him as the best right-hander available to the pros.
It’s no surprise that Checketts has tabbed him to start Friday’s opener against Campbell.
“He’s not in midseason form yet but he’s getting there,” he said. “He threw three (innings) in his second outing last week and it was better than the first one.
“We pulled up all his data and it’s almost exactly the same from where he was at the end of the year.
“His average fastball was 96.4 (mph), and up to 97. He’s still getting a feel for his changeup a little bit. His slider is in a good spot. He’s getting there.”
Flora, a strapping 6-foot-5 righthander who received All-Big West honorable mention last year as a freshman, is set to start Saturday’s 3:05 p.m. game against Campbell.
“His first pitch last weekend was 99 and his average fastball was, I think, almost 97 on the outing,” Checketts said.
“He’s developed two good breaking balls that are really good, and his changeup feels like it’s coming.”
The starters for Sunday’s 1:05 p.m. series finale with Campbell and Tuesday’s 4:05 p.m. home game against Saint Mary’s is up for grabs between a quartet of pitchers: sophomores Calvin Proskey and A.J. Krodel, and juniors Chase Hoover and Reed Moring.
“Proskey is the leader to pitch Sunday,” Checketts said. “He made a jump over the winter break … He came back and looks like he’s pretty close to putting it all together.
“Whomever doesn’t make it probably rolls in as a high-leverage reliever.”
Hoover, a former San Marcos High School star, transferred to UCSB this fall after having made 33 appearances for TCU the last two seasons. He struck out 65 batters over 55⅓ innings but also allowed 42 earned runs.
Checketts loves his potential, but a recent bout of flu has “set him back a little bit.”
Bullish About the Pen
Tryba, a sophomore lefthander, was selected by D1 Baseball to its preseason All-America first team. Checketts wants him to put opponents to bed as the Gaucho closer.
But, like Hoover, he’s also been bedridden.
“His stuff has gotten better,” Checketts said. “His velocity is up. His changeup has been good.
“But he’s another guy who’s been out with the flu, and we had to push him back two days this last week.
“He wasn’t super-sharp on Sunday, and I think that was a product of being out of practice for a while.”
UCSB’s pitching staff, which is still without 2023 Freshman All-American Hudson Barrett, lost another one of its top arms recently when junior righthander Frank Camarillo was injured in a bicycle crash.
Camarillo was the last Gaucho to pitch last season, hurling 1⅔ innings of hitless relief in a June 2 loss to Oregon in the NCAA Regional final.
He followed that up with a short stint in the California Collegiate League with the Santa Barbara Foresters, striking out 26 batters in 21 innings while posting an earned-run average of 0.86.
Checketts doesn’t expect him to pitch for UCSB until April.
“It was a pretty bad accident,” he said. “Somebody clipped him and he hurt his shoulder in the fall.
“It’s terrible for him because he’s been working so hard and was in the mix to get into the rotation.
“Hopefully he’s coming back before Barrett, and both of those guys can give us a shot in the arm for the second half of the season.”
Barrett went 5-1 with six saves, 82 strikeouts and a 1.92 ERA in 61 innings in 2023. He needed Tommy John surgery, however, after injuring his left elbow after just two appearances last season.
“He’s starting to accelerate and he’ll start to face live hitters when we get to mid-March,” Checketts said.
“Hopefully he’ll be ready to go if there aren’t any bumps in the road.”
The Gauchos, who ranked third nationally with last year’s team ERA of 3.84, do have no shortage of arms in their stockpile.
Two lefthanders — senior Hayden Hattenbach and sophomore Nic Peterson — return from last year’s bullpen.
Checketts has added some promising recruits in junior college transfer Donovann Jackson and a stellar freshman class headed by Van Froling, Raymond Olivas and Nathan Aceves.
Powering Back Up
The Gauchos do have a shortage of healthy, experienced field players. They return only three of the 11 players who saw significant action last season, and recent injuries are limiting Checketts’ options.
“We’ve been pretty dinged up since coming back from the break,” he said. “A couple of projected starters have not been there right now.”
Senior outfielder Reiss Calvin and junior college transfer Jeremiah Crain, the projected starter at third base, are both sidelined with strained oblique muscles. Freshman outfielder Jack Haferkamp, one of UCSB’s top recruits, is out with a pulled hamstring muscle.
JC transfer Nathan Vargas, who is projected to split the catcher’s duties with freshman Ian Fernandez, is nursing a sore shoulder.
D1 Baseball — perhaps to Checketts’ chagrin — does project the defensively skilled Fernandez to win the Big West Freshman of the Year Award.
UCSB’s batting lineup also has promise.
Several transfers including Crain, Vargas, Jack Holman, Isaac Kim and Cole Kosciusko should replenish the power supply that led to 84 home runs last year — just shy of the school record of 86 set in 2023.
Sophomore outfielder Rex DeAngelis, who missed nearly all of last year with a severe concussion, can also take some big swings.
“There’s power bodies and power swings,” Checketts said.
“We just don’t have the experience or the résumés to know exactly what that’s going to look like.”
Holman led UCLA with 13 homers in 2023 while Kim hit 17 last season for NCAA Division III power Pomona-Pitzer.
Kosciusko, a transfer from Santa Barbara City College, led the California Collegiate League last summer by hitting nine homers for the Walnut Creek Crawdads. Checketts plans to play him in left field.
The Gauchos appear set up the middle.
Centerfielder LeTrey McCollum is UCSB’s top returning hitter, having batted .320 with 10 stolen bases in as many attempts last year. He went 5-for-7 in the NCAA Regionals despite injuring his hamstring in the opener against Fresno State.
Checketts also returns his starting shortstops from both 2023 and 2024.
Corey Nunez, who missed nearly all of last season with an injury, is back after hitting .277 with 13 extra-base hits as a freshman two years ago.
Jonathan Mendez, who started in his place as a freshman last year, nearly duplicated Nunez’s rookie season with a .272 average and 13 extra-base hits.
“Mendez and Nunez aren’t double-digit homer guys, but they should be able to drive the baseball,” Checketts said. “There’s power in there.
“We’re projecting out that they’re going to make contact and play well.”
Arizona transfer Xavier Esquer, the son of Stanford coach David Esquer, is also a former shortstop.
Checketts has spent the last two weeks figuring out where each player fits best in the Gaucho infield, especially with Crain on the injured list.
“If we started today, it would probably be Esquer at third, Nunez at short, Mendez at second and Holman at first,” he said.
“We had Mendez at third but moved him to second because he’s actually the best one at turning the double play … Esquer seems to play better on the left side.”
Swing of Things
Last weekend’s scrimmages were a mixed bag, as usual. The pitchers dominated on Saturday while the hitters flexed their muscles on Sunday. DeAngelis, Kim and Holman all homered.
“When they start seeing these guys every week for 2½ months, they should be able to take some at bats against them,” Checketts pointed out. “There aren’t any surprises.
“I remember going into one year (2021) with Rodney Boone and Michael McGreevy … They both gave up four or five runs in their last scrimmage start, and I was going, ‘Uh oh …’
“They start the season and they’re fine.”
McGreevy made his debut with the St. Louis Cardinals last summer to become the sixth former Gaucho to pitch in the Major Leagues in the last two seasons.
Boone is on the cusp of the big leagues after posting a 3.26 ERA for the Cleveland Guardians’ Double-A affiliate in Akron, Ohio.
The Gaucho GOAT figures his current stable of pitchers could rival any of UCSB’s previous staffs.
He just can’t wait for them to stop striking out their teammates.
