Overview:
Parker leads 13th-ranked UCSB with a .374 batting average and 50 runs batted in, with 11 home runs also to his credit
Aaron Parker is a numbers guy, like most of the econ and accounting majors at UC Santa Barbara.
He just has a lot more numbers to track than his schoolmates.
It’s not the team-best .374 batting average and 50 runs batted in, nor the 11 home runs, that occupy the attention of the Gauchos’ star baseball catcher.
Parker, a type-A competitor with type 1 diabetes, must stay on top of his blood-sugar count before ever taking his swings near the top of UCSB’s batting order.
“It’s a discipline thing,” he told Noozhawk. “It’s one more thing for me to look at before I go to bed, and before I eat a meal, and before I go play, or before I do anything.
“It’s about making sure that I’m doing exactly what I need to do to so I can do exactly what I want to do on the field.”
Parker has done plenty for the 13th-ranked Gauchos, who clinched their third Big West Conference championship in the last five full seasons on Thursday.
UCSB, 42-12 overall and 26-4 in Big West Conference play, was rewarded by the NCAA on Sunday when it was named to host three other schools in one of the 16 regionals that begin Friday.
The Gauchos, the No. 14 national seed, will open up on Friday at 6 p.m. PT against Mountain West Tournament champion Fresno State (33-27). Oregon (37-18) will face the University of San Diego (40-13) at noon in the other opener of the double-elimination event.
Parker will lead a potent UCSB offense into the tournament.
“He’s a scary, middle-of-the-order bat,” Gaucho coach Andrew Checketts said. “He has some bat control for a guy with power.”
Parker is blessed with the heavily muscled arms and chest of a wrestler. He packs 200 pounds on a stout, 5-foot-9 frame.
He paired that with some elite quickness to lead the Los Altos High School football team in rushing yards for several seasons.
Baseball was always the sport he loved most, but he did appreciate how an earnest effort often translated into a positive result on the gridiron.
“In baseball, the results won’t necessarily come because you’re trying harder,” he explained.
“It was a lot easier for me in football to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to work really, really hard on this play and make a good result happen.’”
Parker then laughed and added, “I’d probably do anything now to put on the pads for a couple days a week and hit some of my teammates … That would be super-fun.”
Speeding Up
His aggressiveness on the base paths has been kept in check ever since he suffered a knee injury in the season opener. Parker has yet to attempt a stolen base.
“A real bonus would be for him to be running at 100% because he’s a legitimate base-stealing threat,” Checketts said.
But Parker said his knee finally feels up to the task.
“I do want to start to bust around a little bit and see what I can do,” he said. “I think it is a perfect time to start picking it up a little bit.”
The Gauchos have picked up their pace as a team by winning their last 14 games. They stretched their Big West winning streak to 21 on Saturday by completing a three-game sweep of UC Riverside.
The season has been everything that Parker expected when workouts began eight months ago.
“We knew during the fall that we were going to have a good squad and that our pitching staff was going to keep us in a lot of games,” he said. “It just basically came down to the offense maturing a little bit from last year, and we’ve done so.
“Checketts does a really good job of recruiting, so we always know that we’re going to have the firepower as long as we have the willpower.”
The lack of a baseball field tested that willpower throughout the fall and winter.
The Gauchos were forced to train on soccer and rugby fields, as well as on the diamonds of other schools near and far, while the California Coastal Commission held up their plans to install artificial turf at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.
The commission didn’t approve the $2.8 million project until mid-December, and only on the condition that UCSB pivot back to natural grass.
The delays forced the Gauchos to play their first 11 games on the road.
“It’s one of those things that Checks always talks about, and it was a big emphasis in the fall,” Parker said. “He always says, ‘The best are comfortable being uncomfortable.’
“So we’d joke about it as a team and say, ‘We get to drive two hours to play a scrimmage against each other … Let’s get comfortable being uncomfortable!’
“But the reality is, that’s what we had to do … So we did get comfortable doing some not-so-fun things.”
Dealing with Diabetes
Parker faced that at a younger age than most. His life took an abrupt turn at age 13 when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
“If you don’t deal with it, then you’re risking your health long term, and that’s something that I don’t want to do,” he said. “A year in, someone would ask, ‘Oh, you’re still getting your feet wet with it?’
“I’d be like, ‘No … I actually just jumped off the diving board and got soaked, so I’ve had to figure out how to get myself dry.’”
Checketts has coached other players who were afflicted with the auto-immune disease of diabetes.
“Some of those other guys maybe struggled a bit more to manage it, and it affected them at times,” he said. “I haven’t noticed that with Aaron.
“He wears an insulin implant in the back of his triceps, and he does a good job of managing it. It’s pretty seamless with him.”
Parker caught the attention of Checketts and Matt Fonteno, UCSB’s associate head coach, by battering nearly every pitcher he faced during his seasons at Los Altos High.
“If you ever want a wow moment, go pull up his high school stats,” Checketts said, referring to a batting average of .562 with 12 homers and just five strikeouts during his senior season of 2021. “They’re ridiculous, I don’t care what league you play in.
“He’s always had a history of hitting and being successful.”
But he did have to wait his turn at UCSB.
Parker spent his freshman season of 2022 as an understudy to veteran catchers Gianni Bloom and Mason Eng.
He mostly just tracked the numbers of other players.
“I did charts for a full year,” Parker recalled.
He did give a sign of things to come during a crucial series at UC Irvine. Checketts added him to the traveling squad after he hit three home runs “off a slow lefty” during a midweek, intrasquad scrimmage.
“I was just happy to be on the bus,” Parker said. “Game day starts, and we’re going through our pregame, and Ferg (assistant coach Donegal Fergus) isn’t treating me any differently.
“But while I’m doing my chart during the game, like I’d done so many times that year, Ferg comes up to me while that little lefty from Irvine, (Nick) Pinto, is doing the pitching.”
Fergus took hold of Parker’s belt and then pulled him “to within two inches of his face.”
“He goes, in a very typical Ferg manner, ‘You got this guy?’” Parker recalled.
He was so startled by the question that his nerves cried out “No!”
“My real answer was, ‘I’ve got no shot!’ … But I’m not going to say no,” Parker said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, if you think I’ve got him, I’ve got him, coach.’
“Blake Klassen was playing hurt, so he then goes, ‘OK, the next time Blake gets up, you’re pinch-hitting for him.’”
Parker immediately pulled on his batting gloves and waited two innings for his turn.
“Christian Kirtley stands next to me and, for two innings straight, tells me exactly what Pinto is going to do with me,” he said. “He says, ‘He’s going to throw you a fastball — and if it’s there, take a swing … If it’s not, take it.
‘“Then he’s going to throw you a changeup … Spit on the changeup … And then he’s going to throw you a fastball again.’”
The sequence during the top of the fifth inning went exactly as Kirtley had predicted.
“He threw me a fastball … I took it,” Parker said. “Then he threw me a changeup down … And then I hit the fastball.
“It was like a personal explosion.”
His blast caromed off the centerfield wall for a triple to score Kyle Johnson and give UCSB a 2-0 lead.
Pitchers Cory Lewis and Matt Ager kept the score there with a combined shutout for a Gaucho team that would win the Big West championship and advance to the NCAA Regionals at Stanford.
Waiting His Turn
Parker made the most of his few at bats the rest of the season, finishing at 6-for-13 for a batting average of .462.
But his status hadn’t changed when the Gauchos headed to Stanford for the regionals.
“I watched it from the stands with my friends from home,” Parker said. “I didn’t get to wear a uniform. I didn’t get to travel.”
He admits, however, that he grew by leaps and bounds as a catcher under Bloom’s tutelage during that freshman season.
“I was like the little brother who’s excited and annoying and loud and probably cocky and aggressive,” he said. “Gianni was the older brother who had to tame his little brother and try to teach him the ways a little bit.
“That relationship meant a lot to me. We could work on baseball and then work on what it looks like off the field — and, as a catcher, on the managing side.”
Parker won the starting catcher’s job as a sophomore while Bloom took over as the Gauchos’ director of player development.
Bloom left UCSB last March, however, after being hired by the Miami Marlins to serve as the defensive coach of their Class A affiliate in Jupiter, Florida.
“I think he’d be pretty proud with how we’ve held it down back there,” Parker said.
“More even than physically, he challenged us the most on the mental side.”
Parker responded to that approach last year by earning All-Big West honorable mention while batting .321 with 10 homers.
Fonteno has stirred the competitive fire in Parker since his return to UCSB this season as its offensive coach.
Having spent the previous two years at USC and Cal Poly, Fonteno took over as the Gauchos’ associate head coach when Loyola Marymount hired Fergus to take charge of its program.
“Fonteno is an elite competitor, and he teaches our hitters to be elite competitors,” Parker said. “The standard was set higher than ever when we were practicing this year.
“I think it’s made the game feel a lot easier for us this year than it might have been in the past.”
The numbers tell the tale. Nearly all of UCSB’s batting statistics have improved from last year: from 6.4 to 7.7 runs per game, from .279 to .299 in batting average, from .374 to .398 in on-base percentage, and from .478 to .487 in slugging percentage.
The 2023 Gauchos did set the school record with 86 home runs, although this year’s club ranks second at 79 with a few more games to play.
Classy Juniors
Four of UCSB’s biggest contributors this year had to sit out and watch as freshmen in 2022 when the team played in its last regional.
Infielder Zander Darby, along with pitchers Matt Ager and Ryan Gallagher, were the only first-year Gauchos to see action at Stanford.
“Our junior class is extremely close — we all live two houses away from each other,” Parker pointed out. “We spend a lot of time together.
“We knew we were talented when we were younger, but guys like me, and Jesse (outfielder Jessada Brown), and Trey (outfielder LeTrey McCollum), and Trim (third baseman Justin Trimble) didn’t get to showcase much early on.
“Jesse came in and just exploded this year, and he was doing charts for two years.”
Brown is batting .351 with eight homers this season. McCollum is at .298 while Trimble, the only Gaucho to play in all 54 games this year, has hit 12 homers with 47 RBI while batting .253.
Darby, who moved from third base to first to make room for Trimble, is hitting .298 with six homers.
“I look at these guys in the locker room and I think, ‘I just want to ball with every one of you for as long as we possibly can,’ because we put in so much time,” Parker said.
“And a lot of it wasn’t on the field for years.”
Parker actually missed 10 games earlier this season after injuring his left knee during the season opener at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina.
He hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat and a two-run double in the next one before hurting his knee in a slide at home plate.
“The frustrating part was that we know how hard we work,” Parker said. “We exploded as an offense that first day, and it felt like every piece of hard work that we’d put in during the fall and winter had just come together and showed in some cool results … And then it had to be put on hold.
“It was definitely a little kick … you know?”
Checketts knew. He gave him a shot in the arm that was just as beneficial as the insulin injections he gets every day.
“He came up to me and said, ‘You’re not staying home on our away weekends … You’re traveling,’” Parker said. “I was pretty happy about that — that he wanted me there with the team — and happy that maybe there was some sort of leadership I could provide.
“Zander’s my roommate on the road, you know, and we’d always have long talks after those games.”
Catchers in the Wry
Senior Brendan Durfee, a transfer from Cal Lutheran University, manned the catcher’s position full-time during Parker’s absence. He’s also played first base this season, batting .351 with nine homers, while starting UCSB’s first 44 games.
He’s been sidelined the last 10 games, however, with a wrist injury.
“Durfee is one of my best friends on the team, but before the season, I was like, ‘I want to catch every game this season here,’” Parker said. “And he was like, ‘I’m going to try my best to not let you.’
“When he was in the lineup, early on in conference, we’d sometimes call ourselves ‘Salt and Pepper’ … This little one-two punch.
“‘Salt and Pepper are always on the table’ was our little inside joke.”
The table has been set for this weekend at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium. The Gauchos have won all 25 of the games they’ve played there this season.
“To get the opportunity to bring a regional to Santa Barbara is amazing, especially with the way we’ve been playing there,” Parker said. “When I look at the finish line, I get very excited.
“But I’ve tried to keep my head down … And whatever is today’s plan, is today’s plan.”
It’s the mantra that has coursed through his veins since age 13.
