Poly, new pitching coach head to USD

When the Cal Poly baseball team opens the season at the University of San Diego on Friday, it will do so with a new pitching coach.

Head coach Larry Lee announced Monday at a weekly athletics department press conference that former Cal Poly pitcher Jason Kelly had been hired to replace Jerry Weinstein, who resigned earlier this month after five seasons to become manager of the Modesto Nuts, a Class-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies.

“He sees things just like I do,” Lee said of Kelly. “It’s a real good fit for our program.”

As the pitching coach at Chico State, Kelly helped the Wildcats reach the Division II College World Series each of the last two years. He was an administrative assistant at Cal Poly in 2004 and previously an assistant coach for both Cuesta College (2003) and the San Luis Obispo Blues (2002-03).

Kelly was 3-1 with a 7.91 ERA while at Cal Poly in 1999 before he redshirted (2000) and transferred to Cuesta (2001) and then Missouri Valley College (2002).

Cal Poly will open its quest for a fourth straight winning season when its three-game nonconference series against San Diego begins at 2 p.m. Friday at Cunningham Stadium. The Toreros are ranked 46th in Collegiate Baseball Newspaper’s preseason poll, in which Cal Poly is unranked but received an undisclosed number of votes.

The Mustangs are coming off a 29-27 season after which they lost six players to the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft and two more who signed free-agent deals. Cal Poly has lost seven juniors early to the draft in the last two years.

In fact, the Mustangs will have almost a brand new team. They must replace:

 All three starting pitchers and their closer.

 Five of their eight position starters.

 Sixty-six percent of their at-bats, 65 percent of their runs scored and 69 percent of their RBI accounted for by players last season who are no longer with the program.

Still, Lee is confident that a talented crop of freshmen can make a quick transition to the Division I level. Cal Poly’s recruiting class was ranked by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper in October as the 20th-best in the country.

At the forefront of that group is shortstop Kyle Smith, who hit .481 with eight home runs and 42 RBI at Buchanan High in Clovis last year.

Lee said Smith, who will lead off, “could be one of the top hitters on the West Coast.”

“Our shortstop, Kyle Smith, is as good as anybody,” Lee said. “Total baseball guy.”

At this point, Cal Poly’s lineup consists of either Adam Buschini or Wes Dorrell at first base, Pat Pezet or Brent Morel at second, Smith at shortstop, Morel or Buschini at third, Luke Yoder or Adam Melker in left field, Logan Schafer in center and Grant Desme in right. Joshua Thomas or Dorrell will start at catcher with either Bryan Kepner or Quentin Cate as the designated hitter.

The No. 1 starter for the Mustangs will likely be sophomore right-hander D.J. Mauldin, followed in the rotation by freshman southpaw Matt Leonard and sophomore right-hander Thomas Eager. Mauldin and Eager combined for three wins and fanned 35 batters in 50 1/3 innings last year. The closer could be junior right-hander Marc Nobriga.

As was the case last year, Cal Poly has a notably difficult schedule. The Mustangs faced the 10th-toughest schedule in the nation last season, according to BoydsWorld.com.

Things only ramped up this season, as Cal Poly plays three of the last four College World Series champions in Rice (2003), Big West Conference foe Cal State Fullerton (2004) and Oregon State (2006). Oregon State is one of seven Pac-10 opponents for the Mustangs this season.

“We’re trying to upgrade our schedule each year,” Lee said. “You want to sink or swim. . To get to the level we want to get, you have to go head-to-head with the best competition.”

Cal Poly won seven of its first eight games against top-25 teams in the Baseball America poll last season but finished 7-6 in that category.

As for what he wants most to find out about his young bunch in its opening series of 2007, Lee said he does not want his players to try to do too much.

“Let the other team make the mistakes,” he said. “Our pitching is young and inconsistent, but we’ve been throwing against our own batters for the past couple weeks, so it’s hard to get a true read.”

The Mustangs will try to improve 11-2 in season openers since moving to the Division I level in 1994.