Overview:
UCSB makes its pitch for a strong stretch run with a staff that ranks second nationally in WHIP (1.14), eighth in earned run average (3.41) and 21st in strikeouts (10.5 per nine innings).
The baseball field can turn into a minefield.
UC Santa Barbara’s troops have taken so many casualties this season that their field general found himself with few reinforcements for last Tuesday’s game against Pepperdine.
“We didn’t have an extra outfielder on the bench,” coach Andrew Checketts told Noozhawk. “We had one utility infielder and one backup catcher.
“But we’re hanging in there. Everybody’s got excuses.”
This Season of the Ouchos took another painful turn on Friday at UC Riverside.
Shortstop Corey Nunez was a last-minute scratch, forcing Checketts to insert his last remaining infielder, Nolan Farley, into the starting lineup.
To misquote an 18th century Scottish verse, the best laid plans of mice and men often go owie.
UCSB, which ran away with last year’s Big West Conference championship with a 26-4 record (44-14 overall), now must scramble just to qualify for the league’s five-team, postseason tournament.
The Gauchos, 24-10 overall, beat UC Riverside on Sunday, 5-3, for their fifth-straight league victory. The winning streak has boosted them into a fourth-place tie with Hawai‘i at 10-8.
Checketts has limped through this dance before.
Injuries knocked the Gauchos down to a 24-32 season in 2017 just one year after the endorphin high of their 2016 run to the College World Series.
“At one point, we had to put catcher Thomas Rowan into left field,” Checketts recalled, “and we got down to our third shortstop after we lost Clay Fisher to Tommy John surgery.”
Topsy-Tourney
UCSB didn’t get back to the NCAAs until it won the Big West championship in 2019.
But the Gauchos can still get there this season despite having fallen 5½ games behind Cal Poly in the league race.
The reward for winning the Big West tournament, set for May 21-25 at Cal State Fullerton’s Goodwin Field, is the league’s automatic berth in the Regionals.
Checketts had lobbied against the league renewing the event, which was last held in 1998, but he concedes that it now may be the Gauchos’ only path to the NCAAs.
“It’s not even a wide-open path,” he said.
“I guess we could get there from an RPI standpoint if we won the rest of our games (20 remain in the regular season, which includes next weekend’s three-game home series against first-place Cal Poly).
“Someone told me the other day, ‘We just have to win the rest of them.’ Well, we actually did that last year.”
UCSB took a Big West winning streak of 21 games into the NCAA Regional it hosted last year at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.
“It has been done,” Checketts said, “but I think that’s a once-a-century deal.”
He first must make sure he has enough field players to get through the season.
Checketts admitted that it was a quieter bus ride than usual when the Gauchos headed to Saint Mary’s for a midweek game on March 25.
“We didn’t bring the guys who were hurt and our weekend starting pitching,” he said. “There were more staff members than players in the dugout.”
The Gauchos’ bats finally made some noise last week with double-digit run production in each of their first three games.
They had entered the Riverside series with a league batting average of just .263 — 82 points behind Cal Poly — to rank seventh out of 11 Big West teams.
“We lost seven starters out of the lineup last year, so we knew we were going to be inexperienced,” Checketts said. “We tried to rectify that with older transfers like Jack Holman, Isaac Kim and Jeremiah Crain.
“But we just haven’t been able to keep anyone on the field for very long, or keep them healthy.”
Jack Be Quick
Holman, a UCLA transfer, batted .516 (16-for-31) with six home runs in his first eight games as UCSB’s first baseman.
But a strained oblique — a muscle located in the rib cage area — weakened the torque of his swing. He went just 10-for-70 with no homers in the next 18 games before Checketts removed him from the lineup.
“He was trying to play hurt for a month, and I appreciate him doing that,” he said. “But we saw how it was affecting him even during batting practice.
“Balls that had been going into the electrical building (beyond the right-field fence) were now just making it to the warning track.
“We had to get him out of the lineup just to get him healed where he can be himself.”
He hopes that Holman, who has missed the last 11 games, can return in time for the Cal Poly series.
The Gauchos also expect Kim back in the coming weeks.
He batted .345 with three homers in UCSB’s first 16 games before missing the last 18 with his own oblique injury.
But nobody has felt bleaker than Crain, a third baseman transfer from Washington’s Tacoma Community College.
“Jeremiah had an oblique, and then a broken jaw and a concussion (sustained in a collision at first base),” Checketts said. “I feel bad for him.
“There’s been just one thing after another, and he’s likely out for the year.”
Outfielder Rex DeAngelis is also out for the season after recently undergoing hand surgery.
The Gauchos have gotten several players back from the injured list, including senior outfielder Reiss Calvin.
The Gauchos have also benefitted from the improving health of outfielder Cole Kosciusko, a transfer from Santa Barbara City College.
A back ailment led to a 0-for-17 start at the plate, but he’s now gotten his batting average up to .263. He’s become especially valuable by filling in at first for Holman and Kim.
“Kosciusko didn’t take a single at-bat during the fall,” Checketts pointed out. “But we had to duct-tape it out there.”
Cycling into Gear
The Gauchos seemed headed in the right direction when they started Big West play by sweeping Cal State Northridge in a three-game series.
The victories improved their overall record to 13-2 and their national ranking to No. 15.
Senior outfielder LeTrey McCollum, who had started the season in a 4-for-23 slump, had a day for the history books in the series finale on March 9.
He completed the first Gaucho cycle (single, double, triple and home run) since Michael Young in 1997 by belting a two-run, walk-off homer to beat the Matadors, 10-9.
“LeTrey has been great,” Checketts said, “and he’s been like that the last two falls.
“He got off to a slow start and we were like, ‘What’s going on, man?’ He destroys our pitching, and we think our pitching is pretty good.
“He and Xavier Esquer are our two leading hitters, and they’re just about the only two guys in the lineup who haven’t missed time for something.”
McCollum has surged to the top of UCSB’s batting charts with a .356 average.
Esquer, an infield transfer from Arizona, is next at .317 with six homers and a team-best 30 RBIs from the leadoff spot.
Sophomore infielder Jonathan Mendez (.301, seven homers) and junior catcher Nate Vargas (.280) have also played in every game, although a shoulder injury relegated Vargas to designated-hitter duty for a while.
Injuries also have forced Checketts to press several true freshmen into the fray. He had hoped to develop Liam Barrett, Rowan Kelly and Jack Haferkamp as his outfield of the future.
“I was saying during the preseason, ‘Hey, I really like our young guys … I just hope they don’t play,’” Checketts said. “That would mean something went wrong with our older guys.
“That’s kind of where we are right now.”
A recurring hamstring injury has limited Barrett to just 11 games. Haferkamp has been sidelined the entire season and will now probably take an injury redshirt.
“We do think Rowan Kelly and Liam Barrett are going to be good,” Checketts said.
“Jack Haferkamp was actually ahead of those guys coming out of the fall, but he’s not going to be healthy enough to play this season.”
Kelly has taken advantage of his newfound playing time. He’s boosted his batting average to .343 while starting the last nine games. Barrett went 3-for-9 this weekend in his return to the lineup as a DH.
Arms Control
The pitching staff hasn’t been immune from the injury bug. Such veteran stars as Cole Tryba, Reed Moring, Frank Camarillo and A.J. Krodel have all spent time on the disabled list.
Former San Marcos High School lefthander Chase Hoover, a transfer from TCU, became the latest pitcher forced to the Hurt Lockers.
A depth of arms, however, has kept UCSB treading above the .500 mark in league play.
“When you look at the body of work that includes nonconference, we’re top 10 in the country in ERA (3.41), top five in WHIP (1.14), and top 10 in strikeouts (10.5 per nine innings),” Checketts said.
“We haven’t always pitched great in conference, but we’ve pitched really well the last six or seven games, and that has to be the recipe for us,” he continued. “We don’t have enough firepower offensively to make up for it.”
Tyler Bremner, Calvin Proskey, Jackson Flora and Nathan Aceves rank among college baseball’s best starting rotations. Donovann Jackson has carried the biggest load in UCSB’s bullpen.
Tryba, a sophomore reliever and preseason All-American, returned to duty recently after having missed a full month.
Lefthander Hudson Barrett, a freshman All-American two years ago, is also expected back in the coming weeks after having undergone Tommy John elbow surgery last season.
“We’ve got about three more weeks of controlled intrasquads with him, and then we’ll likely open him on some midweek games,” Checketts said. “We’ll probably do the same thing with Reed Moring.
“We did that with Frank Camarillo against Pepperdine.”
Checketts admits that the Gauchos must stand tall on the mound if they hope to make a stretch run at an NCAA berth.
“There’s not a lot of wiggle room for us to not pitch at an elite level,” he said.
Now, it just becomes a matter of filling up all that room in the team bus.
