Overview:
Kellan Montgomery has logged a 6-2 record this season as a starting pitcher for UCSB while Chase Hoover has recorded three saves as one of the top relievers for a pitching staff that ranks No. 1 in the nation with an earned run average of 3.07.
Chase Hoover and Kellan Montgomery were always the best of enemies.
They could have been the bitterest of baseball rivals from all those years battling each other on cross-town Little League and high school teams.
Longtime local coach Tony Sandoval put it into perspective for Noozhawk when Hoover, his former pitching ace at San Marcos High School, and two-way Dos Pueblos High star Montgomery entered their senior seasons of 2022.
“I remember coaching the Goleta Valley South 8-and-under All-Stars against the Dos Pueblos Little League,” he said, “and it was Chase Hoover against Kellan Montgomery.
“And here we are, 10 years later …”
And here they are again, another four years hence … but now wearing the same uniform.
Montgomery, a right-handed starter, joined Hoover on UC Santa Barbara’s pitching staff this season after transferring from Long Beach State.
And nobody was happier about that than his former Channel League adversary.
“Me and Kellan played travel ball together during our seventh- and eighth-grade years,” noted Hoover, who is now one of the Gauchos’ top left-handed relievers. “We also did summer camps together away from baseball and knew each other pretty well, so we’ve always been good friends and kept in touch.
“I was super-fired up when I found out that he was coming to UCSB this year … I thought it would be a pretty cool, full-circle moment, and it’s proven to be just that.
“He’s a pretty cool guy.”
They’re now next-locker neighbors in the Graham Family Clubhouse of Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.
“Chase is an awesome dude,” Montgomery said. “We’ve always gotten along … We’ve always been good friends.
“We’ve talked about that multiple times this whole year.
“It’s pretty crazy now that we get to play with each other.”
Many Happy Returns
It’s crazy good for Andrew Checketts, coach of the pennant-contending Gauchos, especially after he struck out on both recruits the first time around.
Hoover, the Channel League’s two-time Pitcher of the Year, turned down UCSB in favor of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
He transferred to UCSB last year after two seasons with the Horned Frogs.
Montgomery, a two-time All-Channel Leaguer, opted for Long Beach after failing to get an offer from the Gauchos.
“We were really in on Chase early, and pretty heavy, too — I’m assuming the first ones in,” Checketts told Noozhawk. “Kellan, I actually went and saw, and he didn’t have a great day, so we backed off it.
“We thought we’d have another look at him in the spring, but Long Beach swooped in.”
He described it as “a collective whoops” for the Gauchos’ coaching staff after Montgomery got the pitching win in relief of a game against UCSB the following year.
Montgomery got current Gaucho teammate Corey Nunez to pop out before striking out current UCSB hitting coach Christian Kirtley with the bases loaded in the fourth inning.
“It was a pretty surreal experience — one of my favorite memories, for sure — especially after having gone to Gaucho games since I was 5 or 6,” he said.
Montgomery, the son of Goleta’s Jenna and Sean Montgomery, also beat the Gauchos during last year’s junior season.
He out-dueled Tyler Bremner, the No. 2 pick in last summer’s Major League Baseball draft, in a matchup of Friday night aces. He allowed just two runs in 5⅓ innings.
“It would’ve been nice to have had him in our dugout all these years,” Checketts said.
“That was a mistake on my part. We’ve regretted it since his freshman year.”
Montgomery’s win-loss record of 9-4 last year included six league victories — third-best in the Big West Conference.
He won 16 games during his three years at Long Beach and also recorded five saves his freshman year.
He successfully flipped the script on March 8 by pitching the Gauchos to a 6-2 victory over Long Beach.
He struck out eight of his former teammates before passing the ball on to Hoover in the seventh.
His old high school rival helped preserve the win by pitching 1⅓ innings of scoreless relief.
“It was funny thinking about them as the actual opposing team,” Montgomery said. “I tried to treat it as just normal weekend and not make it anything too big.
“But it was definitely fun to win that series, for sure.”
He nearly left Long Beach after his sophomore year, entering the NCAA transfer portal briefly when head coach Eric Valenzuela departed to take the Saint Mary’s University job.
“I was hoping the coaching staff would get rehired, but it was an interesting situation and, unfortunately, they all went different ways,” Montgomery said.
“I wasn’t sure how the portal worked, but I had a lot more knowledge about it last summer and was really sure about what I was looking for.
“When Santa Barbara reached out, I was definitely intrigued. As that relationship continued to grow, I was pretty excited.”
And now he and Hoover find themselves in the thick of a Big West pennant race.
Sunny Sundays
Montgomery entered Sunday’s game against Cal State Fullerton — his 11th start of the season — with a record of 6-2 and earned-run average of 3.11.
Checketts likes pitching a veteran in the finale of a three-game series.
“He’s been in a lot of different moments during the course of his career,” he pointed out. “It’s nice to have that on a Sunday, turning the ball over to somebody who you feel like it’s pretty consistent, who you know what you’re going to get.
“The C outings are five innings and a run or two. The A outings are getting into the seventh or eighth, with two runs or less.
“He’s been pretty consistent with that … He hasn’t had any crazy blowups.”
Montgomery proved his mettle in a first-place showdown at UC San Diego on April 12 with the series tied at one game apiece.
The Tritons delayed the game for about 20 minutes with just one out in the first inning by arguing that a pickoff attempt should have been ruled a balk.
The umpires eventually agreed and advanced the runner to second base. Montgomery, who’d been kept standing near the mound the entire time, calmly retired Gabe Camacho on a ground ball to first base before striking out J.C. Allen for the third out.
“There was definitely a moment when I almost told the ump, ‘Just put him at second … I’d rather just start pitching at this point,’” Montgomery said. “It is what it is. That stuff is going to happen.
“The mindset doesn’t change. You just keep competing. For me, it’s always about trying to keep my foot on the gas.”
Even more important was that he didn’t run out of gas despite throwing a career-high 131 pitches that day.
He allowed just four hits and one walk over eight innings, striking out nine, to beat UCSD 3-1.
“We’d gone to our bullpen early on Friday and were thin going into it on Sunday,” Checketts pointed out. “We needed him to get deep into the game, and he did just that.
“He’s pretty durable. He has a pretty efficient delivery.
“If you’re in the fourth year of college and want to play after this, you’ve got to be able to put the team on your back and stay out there a while — and he’s been able to do that.”
Montgomery wasn’t drafted last year despite his strong numbers.
Checketts said he’s added enough to his pitching arsenal to get a shot at professional baseball after this senior season.
“He had a curveball earlier in his career that he’d gone away from a little bit, and he’s brought that back,” he said. “That’s been a really good pitch for him … He can land it with a pretty high spin.
“His slider has gotten a little more velocity to it. A little more shape to it.”
Montgomery credits much of his improvement to the Gaucho way of doing things.
“I’ve told this to some of my buddies who are still at Long Beach,” he said. “I think the main difference is the work we do, day-to-day, is so meticulous. There’s just a plan behind everything.
“It doesn’t ever feel like I’m wasting a throw or wasting a day. Everything we attack, there’s a purpose.”
He’s made adjustments with his fastball that, at times, has accelerated it over 94 mph.
He’s also working on a kick changeup that could give him an opportunity in professional baseball.
“As much as I would’ve like to have played pro ball after last year, I think everything happens for a reason,” Montgomery said. “Not getting the chance at playoff baseball (with Long Beach State) was definitely an upsetting thing, and that’s something I always looked forward to each year.
“The fact that we’re in the spot that we’re in now and have the chance to do so is pretty awesome.”
The Gauchos entered Sunday’s game with records of 27-13 overall and 13-7 in the Big West, as well as a national RPI rating of 27th, putting them in a strong position for an at-large berth to the NCAA playoffs should they not win next month’s league conference tournament.
Catch and Release
Montgomery was Dos Pueblos High’s catcher in the games he didn’t pitch. He earned the Channel League’s Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2021 and batted .401 during his three-year career on varsity.
But Hoover was one of the reasons why he decided that his collegiate future was in pitching a baseball and not hitting it.
“Chase definitely shoved on us a lot of times in high school,” Montgomery said. “Facing him in high school, it was one of the first signs to me that I wasn’t going to be able to hit at the next level.
“Seeing a guy like that in high school is fun, but it’s really hard, too.”
Hoover discouraged plenty of hitters during his time with the Royals, striking out 226 of them in 126⅔ innings.
He logged a career record of 12-2 and ERA of 0.99 while leading San Marcos to consecutive league titles for the first time in school history.
Hoover was “looking to get a new experience” when he picked TCU over UCSB. A promising first season with the Horned Frogs, however, was followed by a discouraging one in 2024.
“He started some midweek games for them as a freshman and had a good year,” Checketts said.
“It looked like he was on track to transition into their weekend rotation in the future, and it just didn’t happen for whatever reason.”
Hoover put Santa Barbara on the top of his wish list when he decided to transfer.
“I believed in my stuff, I knew my stuff looked good on paper, but I definitely had a very challenging sophomore season with a lot of different things that were going on,” he said. “I didn’t really know where I stood, but I remember following UCSB’s ’23 team throughout that season, and that was in the forefront of my mind when I got into the portal.
“I knew what Checketts and D.J. (assistant coach Dylan Jones) had built here with the pitching staff, so I was very keen to look at UCSB immediately upon hitting the portal.”
Like Montgomery, Hoover’s Gaucho debut was a seminal moment in his life. He earned a pitching win in last year’s season-opening series against Campbell while allowing no runs and just one hit with five strikeouts over three innings.
He remembers taking his first pitching lesson from former UCSB assistant coach Tom Myers, now a scout with the Los Angeles Dodgers, when he was just 8 years old.
“I grew up going to Gaucho games,” Hoover said. “I was the kid chasing foul balls into the softball field and running around with my buddies.
“On the homecoming side of things, it’s been really cool for my parents (Kelly and Tim Hoover) and my grandpa (Bob Miyabe) to be able to come to my games more easily.
“Being 2,000 miles away, it was definitely hard on them to do that the last two years.”
The Comeback
Hoover’s season was shut down last year after just eight appearances when he was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his lower back.
Hoover’s strong Christian faith helped him persevere through his recovery.
“It was the main thing that pushed me through that experience, getting close to Christ,” he said. “It was just knowing that there was a plan in which I could get involved in the details of my rehab and actually turn it into an opportunity to improve upon some things with my body.
“My body was obviously communicating to me by getting hurt in that way.”
Hoover was ready when this season started, earning the save in the first two of the eight victories recorded so far by ace Jackson Flora.
He pitched two innings of one-hit, shutout relief in a 5-1 win at 20th-ranked Southern Mississippi.
He followed that up the next week by allowing just two hits and no runs over the last four innings of a 4-1 victory over Portland.
“He carried us early when (Cole) Tryba was down and (Van) Froling wasn’t ready to go,” said Checketts, referring to two of his other high-leverage lefties. “He was the stopper and go-to guy for us.
“His slider has really gotten better. We’ll lean on that pretty heavily because it’s been his best pitch.”
Hoover’s last save at Cal Baptist on April 20 might have been the most impressive.
The Gauchos were “struggling to stop the bleeding,” Checketts said, when he summoned Hoover from the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth inning.
The Lancers had scored six runs in the inning to reduce UCSB’s lead to 8-6.
The 6-foot-1 lefty promptly quashed the rally by striking out Camden Andrews on a full-count pitch.
He also shrugged off a teammate’s throwing error in the ninth inning by striking out the side to seal the victory.
“He came in and finished that game off and was clutch for us,” Checketts said.
Hoover, who was originally a starter at TCU, said he’s “totally embraced” his role as a Gaucho reliever.
“I’ve just learned to love being in those moments,” he said, “being the guy they depend upon to get us through those situations when the game gets a little crazy.”
Hoover has been even better than his 4.39 ERA might indicate, Checketts said.
“He’s had a couple of tough-luck outings where he’s thrown better than the numbers,” he said. “He gave up three in one game (against Oregon) when they didn’t hit the ball out of the infield and we dropped some balls.
“He’s had a few others when he’s left with guys on base and the guys coming in after him had all those runners score.
“If you look at his strikeouts to walks (36-to-11), and his appearances, he’s been really solid for us.”
Pro-Active
Hoover is relishing those moments instead of looking ahead to what might come in this summer’s MLB draft. As a redshirt junior, he’ll have his best bargaining power for professional baseball.
“The struggles and lower moments that have happened the past two years haven’t changed what the end goal has been, and obviously I love baseball and want to play this game for as long as I possibly can,” he said. “That’s always been the goal.
“But I’m just trying to stay day-to-day with what I’m trying to do and not get too far ahead of myself there.”
First on his itinerary is to win a Big West championship and go to the NCAA tournament with some of his new best friends, along with one of his oldest.
“It’s been super-cool being on this team from the beginning of the fall,” Hoover said. “This is a team with a lot of returning guys who were shaped by the adversity of last year.
“I think that’s made us a more resilient group … a group that’s not riding the emotional roller-coaster of a season.
“We’ve got guys from the ’23 team who had extreme successes, hosting a regional, and we’ve got a lot of guys who were here last year that experienced the low of missing out on a regional.
“I think that’s just culminated in a team that’s really rooted in what we’re trying to do.”
And nobody’s roots run deeper than the two Gauchos who rooted for them as kids.
