Cal Poly to Host UC Irvine for Big West Series on Alumni Weekend

Friday, March 24

San Luis Obispo, CA

6 p.m.

UC Irvine

Tickets

Cal Poly breaks huddle prior to recent game.

Photo by: Owen Main | Cal Poly Athletics

Cal Poly to Host UC Irvine for Big West Series on Alumni Weekend

3/22/2023 11:22:00 AM | Baseball

WEEKLY NOTES: CAL POLY | UC IRVINE | BIG WEST
VIDEO STREAM: FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY
AUDIO STREAM: FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY
LIVE STATS: FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY
TICKETS | GAME PROGRAM | ALUMNI WEEKEND

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- Cal Poly (4-13, 1-2 Big West), which opened its 2023 baseball season by winning two of three games against Missouri State, its first series win to open a season since 2016, then lost 12 of its next 13 contests before salvaging a win in the final game of its Big West series against Hawai'i, concludes its 14-game home stand and continues conference play this weekend by hosting No. 30 UC Irvine (12-5, 1-2 Big West) at Baggett Stadium (cap.: 3,138).

First pitches are set for 6 p.m. Friday, 4 o'clock Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. All three games of the series will be broadcast on ESPN Radio (1280 AM and 101.7 FM) with Daniel Gillman calling the play-by-play and video streamed on ESPN+ with Zachary Anderson-Yoxsimer on the mic. Links for audio and video streams as well as for live stats are available on the baseball schedule page at www.GoPoly.com.

After opening with two wins in three games versus Missouri State, Cal Poly led San Jose State 11-10 before play was halted after eight innings due to darkness on Feb. 20. That game will be resumed April 18 in San Luis Obispo. The Mustangs then lost all three games in Berkeley — two to Cal and one to UConn, which won 50 games a year ago — won just once in four contests against No. 18 Oregon State, dropped three more games — one to Xavier and two against UC Santa Barbara — and dropped the first two games of its Big West-opening series against Hawai'i before earning a 10-3 triumph in the finale.

UC Irvine opened its 2023 season by sweeping Tulane, winning four of its next five games against five different opponents and sweeping Arizona State for a 10-1 start. Since then, the Anteaters have lost four of six, opening Big West play by dropping two of three at home against Cal State Fullerton last weekend.

A year ago, the Mustangs claimed second place in the Big West for the fourth time in the last five full seasons, winning 22 of 30 games and nine of the 10 series.

Cal Poly returned just three position starters — first baseman Joe Yorke and catchers Ryan Stafford and Collin Villegas, one of whom plays left field when not behind the plate — off last year's 37-21 club. Yorke hit .353 with 51 RBIs and committed just two errors in 475 fielding chances while Stafford compiled a .321 average with 16 doubles and 33 RBIs, throwing out 11 would-be base stealers and picking off four others. Villegas hit .290 with 20 doubles and 40 RBIs. Yorke and Stafford were first-team All-Big West selections while Villegas landed on the second unit.Pitching could be a strength of the club with a dozen returnees, including Travis Weston, Cal Poly's Saturday starter the last two years. Bryce Warrecker, who had a strong summer in the Cape Cod League, and Derek True, a 20th-round draft pick of the Oakland Athletics last July, also return.

After a 7-9 start, Cal Poly put together five- and six-game winning streaks, moving 10 games above the .500 mark for the first time since the 2016 season by taking two of three games in back-to-back Big West series on the road at UC Irvine and UC Riverside. The Mustangs won 13 straight games, the longest in a single season for the program before losing the season finale at Hawai'i.

UC Irvine returned 21 lettermen, including five starting position players and 11 pitchers, off a squad that finished 32-24 in 2022 and sixth in the Big West at 16-14. Top returnees include center fielder Caden Kendle (.328, six home runs, 17 RBIs in 2022), shortstop Dub Gleed (.271, 38 RBIs) and second baseman Woody Hadeen (.267, 17 RBIs, 13 steals). The pitching staff is headed by southpaw Nick Pinto (2-6, 3.23 ERA in 2022) and right-handers Michael Frias (5-2, 5.19 ERA) and Jacob King (1-1, 5.56 ERA, four saves).

Seventeen games into the 2023 season, first baseman Anthony Martinez leads the Anteater offense with a .368 average, nine doubles, four home runs and 22 RBIs. Kendle is next at .316 with seven doubles, three triples, a pair of home runs and a Big West-leading 27 RBIs while second baseman Will Bermudez sports a .303 average with four doubles, two triples, two home runs and 13 RBIs. On the mound, Pinto has compiled a 2-0 record and 1.96 ERA while right-hander David Vizcaino is 2-1 with a 7.30 ERA. King has three saves, a 1-0 mark and 8.31 ERA.

UC Irvine is hitting .287 as a team with 30 doubles, 11 triples, 15 home runs and 13 steals in 18 attempts. The Anteaters' pitching staff has compiled a 4.68 ERA with 152 strikeouts over 154 innings and UC?Irvine has committed 17 errors in 17 games for a .973 fielding percentage.

UC Irvine has qualified for the NCAA regionals 14 times (nine in Division I), compiling a 29-19 win-loss record in Division I postseason competition and qualifying for the College World Series in 2007 and 2014. The Anteaters, who discontinued baseball from 1993-2001, won the Big West title in 2009 and 2021.

Cal Poly and UC Irvine have met 64 times on the baseball field since the series began when both teams were Southern California Baseball Alliance members back in 1977. The Anteaters hold a 35-29 advantage, though Cal Poly won two of three games inside Anteater Ballpark a year ago. UC Irvine claimed three of four games at Baggett Stadium in 2021.

Cal Poly is 26-35 against UC Irvine since the Mustangs moved to Division I prior to the 1995 season. Larry Lee is 25-33 against UC Irvine while Ben Orloff is 6-4 versus Cal Poly.

Orloff (fifth season, 132-71, UC Irvine '09), a three-year All-American shortstop at UC Irvine, was hired in July 2018 as the ninth head coach in Anteater program history. Orloff initially joined the coaching staff in 2014 as an assistant, rising to associate head coach. He was the program's first Big West Player of the Year, won the 2009 Brooks Wallace Award and was also the first Anteater player to win an American Baseball Coaches Association Gold Glove award.

Orloff, a lifetime .320 hitter at UC Irvine, also was named to two NCAA Tournament teams and helped UC Irvine to four postseason berths. He holds the NCAA single-season mark of 34 sacrifice bunts set in 2007 and in a career with 86. Orloff was drafted in the ninth round by the Houston Astros and climbed to Double-A Corpus Christi before moving into the coaching ranks.

Orloff was also a participant in the World Baseball Classic in 2012 as a member of Team Israel. Orloff replaced Mike Gillespie, who was 1,156-720-2 in 31 seasons as a college head coach — 20 years at USC and 11 more at UC Irvine. Gillespie was head coach at College of the Canyons for 16 seasons and played left field on USC's 1961 national championship team.

Cal Poly's first full practice session of 2023 on Jan. 27 featured 18 newcomers and a completely new staff of assistant coaches under 21st-year head coach Larry Lee. Pitching coach Seth Moir, an assistant at San Jose State the last two seasons, outfielder coach and associate head coach/recruiting coordinator Matt Fonteno, who has served as an assistant coach at USC, UC Santa Barbara, Saint Mary's and Nevada the last 10 years, and Logan Denholm, a catcher at UC Davis and Sacramento State and most recently a volunteer assistant coach at San Jose State, were hired last summer.

The staff had the unenviable task of finding replacements for a pair of multiple All-Americans — Drew Thorpe and shortstop Brooks Lee, both drafted last July by the New York Yankees (second round) and Minnesota Twins (eighth overall selection), respectively. Lee hit .342 in 2021 and .357 last spring, combining for 25 home runs and 112 RBIs in the two seasons en route to a pair of Big West Conference Field Player of the Year awards. Thorpe was 10-1 with a 2.32 ERA and a school-record 149 strikeouts, which led the nation at the conclusion of the 2022 regular season, on his way to Big West Pitcher of the Year honors.

With their departure, Lee and his new coaching staff were faced with finding and developing replacements for three infield positions, two in the outfield and the designated hitter along with two starters in the weekend pitching rotation.
"It's a total rebuild, especially on the position player side where we only return three regulars from last year's squad," said Lee. "Our offensive and defensive lineups will look totally different than a year ago with six of nine new faces in the starting lineup every game.

"You're going to see some inexperience that could possibly show early on, but hopefully those players will allow themselves to slow the game down as the season progresses. With so many new faces in our offensive and defensive lineups, you're going to see some growing pains early in the season. We can't allow that to go on for too long," Lee added.

"Individually you're not going to replace guys like Brooks and Drew, two players who were as good as anyone in the country. Not only did they put up incredible numbers, they took on the responsibility of having the bull's-eyes on their backs and allowing all of their teammates to stay within themselves and not think that they had to do anything special.

"The effect that they had on games is hard to measure. You're hoping that you can get better in the other positions from last year in order to become more of a complete well-rounded team."

The preseason depth chart had two transfers topping the middle infield candidates — Ryan Fenn of Cuesta College at second base and Aaron Casillas of CSU Bakersfield at shortstop. A third transfer, Jake Steels of Hancock College, is the starter in center field. True freshman Tate Shimao, redshirt freshman Tanner Sagouspe and either Matthias Haas (who transfered to Cal Poly from Brown a year ago) or true freshman Evan Cloyd are expected to start at third base, right field and designated hitter.

The Mustangs' weekend rotation on the mound so far has featured Warrecker on Friday, Travis Weston for the third straight year on Saturday and College of San Mateo transfer Ryan Baum (4-1, 1.62 ERA last spring) on Sunday. Weston was 7-3 with a 3.91 ERA a year ago and has five career complete games as a Mustang, including three shutouts. Warrecker missed the first half of the 2022 season due to injury and finished 2-0 with a 5.81 ERA before earning the Cape Cod League's most outstanding pitcher award while pitching for the Orleans Firebirds.

Other potential starters include Kaden Sheedy (3-2, 5.23 ERA), Steven Brooks (0-2, 5.33 ERA) and newcomers Freddy Rodriguez (River City HS), all right-handers. Top candidates in the bullpen are True (1-1, 4.79 ERA), Kyle Scott (0-3, 6.26 ERA, three saves) and Carlo Lopiccolo, among others. Scott produced seven saves and two wins in 2021.

The Mustangs opened their 2023 season with a robust .336 batting average in their three-game series against Missouri State, including eight doubles, a triple and three home runs, but hit just .224 in three losses at Berkeley — two to Cal and one to UConn — .188 in the four-game series versus Oregon State, .224 in three games versus Xavier and UCSB and .262 last week against Hawai'i. Collin Villegas was 6-for-17 including a four-hit game while Ryan Stafford collected five hits and drove in three runs against Hawai'i.

Steels sported a team-leading .438 batting average with a home run and three RBIs before he was sidelined two weeks with an injury. Yorke also was out with an injury for two weeks after hitting .308 average with eight RBIs. Both returned to the lineup two weeks ago. Steels is hitting .333 to date, Stafford .299 with six doubles, and Yorke and freshman right fielder Wyatt King, each with .269 marks. Casillas is at .265 while Villegas, hitting .254, leads the team with five home runs and 12 RBIs.

The Mustangs are hitting .247 as a team, ninth in the 11-team Big West, and the staff ERA is at 6.29, 10th in the conference. Cal Poly has committed 22 errors in 17 games for a .964 fielding percentage and has stolen just nine bases in 13 attempts.

Lee (21st season, 618-489-2, Pepperdine '83) reached the 600-victory milestone April 22, 2022, with a 9-3 nod over UC?Riverside. He earned 460 wins in 16 seasons at Cuesta College and notched his 460th Mustang victory on March 13, 2017 against Gonzaga and his 1,000th career victory with a 3-0 triumph at?UC?Santa Barbara on May 23, 2019. He currently has a 1,078-730-5 record over 36-plus seasons as a head coach and coached his 1,000th game as Cal Poly's head coach on April 1, 2021, a 10-1 win over UC?San Diego.

Cal Poly won 11 of its 15 series in 2022 with a 2-2 split versus Harvard, losing series only against Big West champion UC Santa Barbara and non-conference foes Washington and UNLV. The Mustangs earned five sweeps versus Dixie State, CSUN, CSU Bakersfield and UC Davis at home and perennial national power Cal State Fullerton on the road, their first ever at Goodwin Field.

Cal Poly was ranked in the top 30 in the Collegiate Baseball national poll four times in April and also earned a No. 18 ranking during the final week of the regular season.

Cal Poly averaged 1,900 fans over 32 home dates last season, a Baggett Stadium record. The 2,738 fans who came out to see Stanford on April 19 was a record for a midweek game and the Mustangs have drawn at least 1,000 fans for each of their last 136 consecutive home games and 159 of their last 160 contests -- not including the 12 dates in 2021 when crowds were limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Next week, Cal Poly plays a midweek game Tuesday at Fresno State before visiting Long Beach State for three Big West games Friday through Sunday at Blair Field.