Ryan ChartrandCal Poly head baseball coach Larry Lee knew his Mustangs had one of the toughest schedules in the country heading into the season.
Even after finishing with the program’s fewest wins since 1999, though, and his worst winning percentage as a head coach since 1989, Lee doesn’t regret taking on the challenging slate, the ninth-toughest schedule in the country according to BoydsWorld.com.
The Mustangs, whose season ended Sunday with a 12-7 win at UC Riverside, were 24-32, including 8-16 for a seventh-place tie in the Big West Conference, and finished with a Ratings Percentage Index ranking of 96th.
“It was difficult in that we put together an extremely strong non-conference schedule,” Lee said. “And to play a schedule like that, you need to have all the pieces to the puzzle, and we just didn’t have that all at once. If we had a softer schedule, things may have been different, but that’s not what we want.”
In all but eight of their losses, the Mustangs held leads at one point.
“It’s a mixed type of feeling, because we’d been ahead and hadn’t been able to hold on to those leads,” Cal Poly junior left-hander Jared Eskew said. “To a certain extent, we didn’t play too well, but a lot of those games were against top-notch teams.”
Lee said junior third baseman Brent Morel, junior center fielder Logan Schafer, sophomore designated hitter Luke Yoder and sophomore right-hander Kevin Castner will likely be lost through the Major League Baseball draft, held June 5-6.
“A lot of positions will be open,” Lee said. “Hopefully, two or three first-year players will take that next step up.”
Morel finished with team highs of a .368 batting average and 60 RBI. Also hitting better than .300 were Schafer (.365, nine home runs and 49 RBI), junior right fielder Ryan Lee (.357 with 21 RBI), Yoder (.345 with eight homers and 33 RBI), sophomore left fielder Adam Melker (.314) and sophomore first baseman Wes Dorrell (.304).
Cal Poly’s pitching staff, which figures to undergo less turnover, should return junior right-hander Eric Massingham (2-5 with a 5.86 ERA), Eskew (5-4, 4.11 ERA) and sophomore right-hander Steven Fischback (5-4, 4.55 ERA), who Larry Lee said “stepped up and can become one of the best pitchers in the Big West.”
No Cal Poly pitchers won more than five games, as the staff tossed its way to a collective 5.15 ERA.
“Experience means a lot at this level,” Lee said. “That extra playing time should really help our returners, and we should return the majority of our pitching staff.”
Also bolstering the Mustangs’ pitching should be returning sophomore southpaws Matt Leonard and Frankie Reed, both coming back from preseason injuries.
“We just never overcame our preseason injuries,” Lee said. “We just didn’t have enough numbers on the mound to put together any stretches of wins.”
Junior first baseman Adam Buschini was also lost to injury for the season during that time, and sophomore shortstop Kyle Smith missed 11 games during the season.
“We were a solid defensive club,” Lee said of the full-health Mustangs. “Then we started breaking down in different areas, and we could never really get all facets going at the same time.”
Eskew, who also emphasized the importance of the added experience, will be one of several Mustangs playing summer baseball, which he’ll do for the Corvallis Knights of Corvallis, Ore.
“I’m just going to keep working hard,” he said. “It’s all about being a more mature, smarter player.”