“Why Not Us?,” would be a fitting theme to the 2023 Santa Barbara Foresters baseball season.
The team of primarily Division 1 college ballplayers who just finished their freshman and sophomore seasons at schools all over the country, enters the summer season seeking an unprecedented fourth straight National Baseball Congress World Series championship in Wichita, Kansas.
“It’s a brand-new team,” said manager Bill Pintard, who has guided the Foresters to 10 national titles in his 29 years at the helm. “We have only two returners who have dog-piled. These guys haven’t dog-piled, so why not make history. Nobody’s ever done it (won four in a row), so why not us? I’m pretty driven for that.”
The Foresters open their 24-game regular season Saturday at Pershing Park against the San Luis Obispo Blues at 6 p.m. Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse will throw out the first pitch and the Foresters will unveil their 2022 NBC World Series Championship banner.
Individual game tickets are available at the gate. Adult tickets are $7 while seniors and kids ages 4-12 are $3.
Saturday’s season opener is also the start of the California Collegiate League. The Foresters are in the CCL South Division with the Blues, Academy Barons from Compton, Arroyo Seco Saints of Pasadena, Orange County Riptide and Conejo Oaks of Thousand Oaks.
The Foresters won’t have their full roster for the first few weeks of the season because several players are still competing in the NCAA Tournament. Among those is Santa Barbara’s own Chase Hoover. The former San Marcos High star is a freshman pitcher for Texas Christian, which is hosting a three-game Super Regional series against Indiana State over the weekend. Eight Super Regional winners advance to the College World Series in Omaha.
The other Super Regional teams with Forester players are Oregon, Tennessee and Texas.
The opening-day roster, however, remains loaded with talent from D1 programs like Texas Tech, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Oklahoma State, Arizona State, Tulane, UNLV, UCSB, Nevada-Reno, USC, Northwestern, Santa Clara, Wichita State and Creighton.
Catcher Johnny Newman Jr. is the UCSB player on the squad.
The early-season roster will include local talent like pitcher and Bishop Diego alum Gabe Arteaga, who last week helped Westmont College win its first NAIA World Series title. He’ll be joined by teammates Sean Youngerman and Zach Yates. Santa Barbara High infield standout Dane Dawson, who just earned All-CIF honors, is also on the team.
A big part of the success the Foresters have achieved under the guidance of Pintard and his coaching staff is a credit to the relationships the manager has cultivated with college coaches over the years.
Unlike the early days of his tenure, Pintard doesn’t have to travel around the country to recruit talent. The talent is now sent to him.
“When we started, we spent 13 days in a row on the road, (assistant) Pat Burns and I,” Pintard recalled. “We slept on friends’ couches and we went to all different schools and watched players.
“Over the years, our reputation has grown. If you look at some of the schools on (the roster), they’re all familiar schools. Texas Tech, I’ve been dealing with them for so long. They’ve developed a trust in us that we’re going to make their guys better.”
The proof is the final results. Josh Jung, a member of the 2017 Foresters team out of Texas Tech, is now playing in the Major Leagues with the Texas Rangers. Parker Mushinski, another Texas Tech product from the 2016 squad, is a reliever for the Cincinnati Reds.
A more recent Forester, Matt McLain of the national-champion 2020 team out of UCLA, had a game-winning hit for the Reds against the Dodgers earlier this week.
“It’s a confidence in who (the coaches) are sending us and what we’re going to do with them,” said Pintard of the young college players. “That’s what builds (the program) up and that’s how we get them.
“It doesn’t hurt that we’ve had a number of ex-Forester players coaching,” he added. “Matt Hobbs is the pitching coach at Arkansas.”
The Foresters have three Arkansas pitchers on the squad, led by Gage Wood, who had 42 strikeouts in 30 innings and posted an ERA of 4.80 as a freshman for the Razorbacks.
“Hobbs just told me that he’s up to 96 mph and pitches at 94-96,” said Pintard of Wood’s fastball.
Pintard also has well-established relationships with Clay Van Hook, the head coach at the University of Texas Arlington (formerly of Oklahoma), Drew Bishop, formerly at the University of Texas and now the Director of Scouting for Five-Tool Baseball, and current Texas coach Dave Pierce.
“I’ve been getting players from him since he was at Rice,” said Pintard of Pierce. “That’s how it is, the players come and go, the coaches stay. And it’s our relationships with those coaches.”
While many of his players were in reserve roles in their first year of college baseball, Pintard said he has guys who were starters. Among them are Oklahoma catcher Easton Carmichael and first baseman/outfielder Rocco Garza-Gongora. Carmichael started 47 games and batted .306 with six homers and 48 RBIs. Garza-Gongora batted .293 with three homers, six doubles and 27 RBIs.
Ryan Black, of Texas Arlington, earned second-team All-Western Athletic Conference honors as a freshman. He started in 52 of 53 games and hit .341 with 70 hits, including seven homers, and drove in 53 runs.
Pintard is hoping to have starting TCU shortstop Anthony Silva on the field this summer. The freshman batted .342 with 46 RBIs.
“We might lose him to Team USA because he just got invited to their (Collegiate National Team) trial, so we won’t be with us for a while. Hopefully, we’ll have him at the end of the season.”
Pintard said a lot of the players that got limited playing time during the college season, “will be the starting guy next year, so that’s why (their coaches) send them to us.”
And it’s a treat for fans to watch their development up close on a summer evening at Pershing Park.