SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- Cal Poly head baseball coach Larry Lee will exchange his green and gold jerseys for those with red, white and blue next week.
The 21-year Mustang skipper is serving as manager for USA Baseball's 2023 Collegiate National Team, six years after he was an assistant coach for Team USA under manager John Savage, the head coach at UCLA.
"I thought if I don't do it now, I'll never do it, so I'm glad I made that decision and it'll be a great experience," Lee said in an interview with KSBY.
Another area head coach and a former player for Lee at Cuesta College from 1993-95, Bryan Madsen of St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria, will be an assistant coach with USA Baseball's 12U National Team.
First order of business for Lee will be to pare down the 56-player pool of non-draft eligible candidates to a final 26-man roster in a four-game Stars and Stripes intrasquad series June 25-28 at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina.
The final roster will compete in the 20th USA vs. Chinese Taipei International Friendship Series on June 30 through July 4 at Cary, Durham, Kannapolis and Fayetteville, N.C., and the 44th USA vs. Japan Collegiate All-Star Championship Series, scheduled for July 7-12. First three games of the USA-Japan series will be played in Cary, with the sites for the final two contests to be determined at a later date.
Ryan Stafford attempts to throw out a would-be
base stealer in game at Baggett Stadium this year.
Joining Lee in Cary will be Cal Poly riding junior catcher Ryan Stafford, who is the 11th Mustang to accept an invitation from USA Baseball. Of the 10 previous Mustangs invited to Team USA's training camp, five were selected to play in friendship series. They were Brooks Lee (2021), Drew Thorpe (2021), Nick Meyer (2017), Mark Mathias (2014) and Matt Imhof (2013).
The other five invited to training camp were Matt Jensen (2009 and 2010), Mike Zirelli (1997), Jon Macalutas (1995), John Orton (1986) and Ozzie Smith (1976).
In his second season at Cal Poly, Stafford hit .313 with 20 doubles, seven home runs and 44 RBIs in 56 games, starting 42 games behind the plate and 14 in left field. Stafford threw out 11 would-be base stealers for the second straight year and picked off three other runners. He was 22-for-50 (.440) with 10 multiple-hit games in a 12-game stretch from April 4-23, lifting his average 48 points to .342.
Prior to the opening of the 2023 season, Stafford was added to the 2023 Buster Posey National Collegiate Catcher of the Year Award Watch List.
As a freshman a year ago, Stafford hit .321 with 16 doubles, three home runs and 33 RBIs in 58 games en route to a first-team All-Big West Conference award and a pair of freshman All-American awards (Collegiate Baseball and Baseball America). Stafford led the Big West in sacrifice flies with six and picked off four runners on the basepaths.
Stafford is a 2021 graduate of Folsom High School, where he hit .458 as a senior and earned first-team All-Sierra Foothill League honors.
Larry Lee conducts a meeting on the mound in a recent game.
Lee, the winningest head coach in Big West baseball history with 635 victories, also holds the conference record for wins in Big West games with 283. Thirteen of his former players have worked their way onto Major League rosters, including six this year. Lee's 37-year overall record, including 16 seasons as head coach at Cuesta College, is 1,095-752-5.
"Larry has been an extremely successful head baseball coach for over three decades and is a perfect fit to lead our team in 2023," said USA Baseball General Manager of Collegiate and Professional Teams Eric Campbell. "Over the past 20 years, Larry has turned Cal Poly into one of the West Coast's perennial baseball programs thanks to his tremendous baseball acumen and knowledge.
"We are confident that he will provide valuable leadership to the young men on our roster, which will feature college baseball's best once again this year," Campbell added.
"It's always an honor to be a part of the Collegiate National Team coaching staff," said Lee. "I look forward to being surrounded by some of the best coaches and players in college baseball."
Since taking over as head coach in 2003, Lee has led Cal Poly to eleven 30-win seasons, including a record-setting campaign in 2014 in which the Mustangs broke the program record with 47 wins and won their first Big West Championship. The program has finished in the top four of the conference standings in 17 of Lee's 20 full seasons and recently notched three consecutive second-place finishes from 2017-19 along with another runner-up finish in 2022 with 37 wins.
The Mustangs have won over 35 games in seven different seasons under Lee.
Lee's program has reached the NCAA Division I Regionals on three different occasions, including its first-ever appearance in 2009. The Mustangs returned to the tournament in 2013 and pushed eventual national champion UCLA to the brink of elimination before falling to the Bruins in the Los Angeles Regional. Cal Poly then capped its record-breaking season in 2014 by hosting the San Luis Obispo Regional.
Thirty-six Mustangs have been drafted in the first 10 rounds of the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft during Lee's tenure. Most recently, Lee's son, Brooks, was selected with the eighth overall pick in the 2022 Draft by the Minnesota Twins. In total, 81 of Lee's players have signed professional baseball contracts.
Team USA leads the series with Chinese Taipei 15-0-4. Against Japan, the stars and stripes lead the series 24-19, including a 21-1 series record in the United States.
