(Photo by Ian Billings)
Jefferson P. Nolan
jnolan@mustangdaily.net
It’s appropriate that, for the 2013 Cal Poly baseball team, the most quoted phrase tossed around the locker room is to “never be satisfied.”
For it was only a month ago that the fate of the Cal Poly baseball team was more than uncertain.
Midway through conference play, the Mustangs — after winning 13 of their first 14 games of the season — realized things needed to change.
Series losses to Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State and UC Irvine proved to be a wakeup call for head coach Larry Lee and his ball club.
“You play 56 games in a 15-week season, so you have to be resilient as a baseball team,” Lee said. “You have to learn from those losses and not dwell on it. From a coaching standpoint, it’s our job to see what worked, what didn’t and what needs to be tweaked. You go on and get to the next game. If your mind is stuck on the past, you’re destined for failure.”
After beginning conference play with a sweep against UC Davis, the Mustangs dropped two games to UC Santa Barbara in Isla Vista.
It was after their second series victory over Pacific that the Mustangs hosted Cal State Fullerton, then ranked No. 4 in the nation.
“When we played (Cal State Fullerton) for the first time, I think that we thought ‘It’s Fullerton … We have to beat them,’” first baseman John Schuknecht said. “Now, they’re just another team. We have to play against the baseball, not them. We obviously would love to have a ‘revenge’ game, but I think we’ve matured since then.”
The Mustangs quieted the Titans’ dugout as Cal Poly seized the first game of the series. However, Cal State Fullerton responded with back-to-back victories to take the series.
But despite the Mustangs’ setback, pitching coach Thomas Eager knows how much his players have learned after playing a highly ranked team.
“It was in the Fullerton series where we learned the most,” Eager said. “I look at that series, and I always tell my players to play with no regrets. They kind of learned how they needed to play and what they needed to do. They learn the most after playing against a quality team in a stressful situation and learning how to control themselves. The Fullerton game was the one in which we learned who we are and who we need to be to win.”
After the loss to the Titans, Cal Poly traveled south to Long Beach State where the Dirtbags took two of the three-game series.
“I feel like there is an unspoken rivalry against Long Beach,” sophomore right fielder Nick Torres said. “We always play pretty scrappy against them, and that was a tough series to handle.”
But while the Mustangs hoped to emerge with a series victory over Long Beach State, Torres insists he and his team did what they needed to receive a playoff berth.
“To take one out of three was all we really needed to put us in a good position,” Torres said. “Same thing with Irvine. Obviously, it would have been nice to take two or three, but it was good to go down there and take care of business.”
And while the most substantial defensive change was Schuknecht relieving sophomore Tommy Pluschkell at first base after Cal Poly’s series against UC Riverside, the pitching staff has made one important alteration in their starting rotation.
Freshman right-hander Casey Bloomquist, after starting the nonconference Tuesday games during the regular season, recently made the transition as Cal Poly’s Sunday starter, taking the place of Bryan Granger.
Bloomquist, after giving up two earned runs on six hits in 7 1/3 innings against Cal State Northridge, will serve as the Mustangs’ third starter in the pitching rotation in the Los Angeles Regional.
“(Bloomquist) was doing very well, and you don’t want to mess up a good thing when he was taking care of business on Tuesdays,” Eager said. “He is a freshman, but I tell him all the time that he’s not a freshman. Being a first year doesn’t mean anything. It’s very uncommon because most teams undergo a few changes throughout the year, while we didn’t. I just think that it’s a tribute to our guys and their belief and hard work.”
Following the series loss to UC Irvine, the Cal Poly baseball squad proceeded to sweep Cal State Northridge, won six of its final seven games in the regular season and produced a Division I-school record of 39 wins in a season.
And now, after finishing in a tie for second place in the Big West Conference behind Cal State Fullerton, the Mustangs will travel to the campus of UCLA to compete in the Los Angeles Regional of the NCAA tournament. The four-team, double-elimination bracket will commence for Cal Poly when Lee’s team takes on the University of San Diego on Friday at 2 p.m. The Mustangs will either compete against host UCLA or San Diego State in the second game of the four-team tournament on Saturday.
And before entering the tournament, Lee and his team will persist in their “never satisfied” mindset. It’s one out, one pitch at a time.
“We’ve been very strong at the end of ball games,” Lee said. “But lately, we haven’t had very strong defense, and our offense has never really clicked in to where it should be. We just need to stay positive and just learn from the regular season. If you watch other sporting events, especially in the major league level, you see these players who have an incredible series because they were able to rise to the occasion. Hopefully, we get a number of those guys.”