Stafford, Garza, and Naess Awarded as Mustangs Earn 11 All-Big West Honors
5/30/2024 12:30:00 PM | Baseball
IRVINE, Calif. – After a fantastic turn-around effort from 2023, Cal Poly (35-22, 20-10 BW) raked in the conference honors as eight different Mustangs shared eleven total distinctions, led by Ryan Stafford, Alejandro Garza, and Griffin Naess who all won major awards.
Throughout 2024, Cal Poly experienced numerous record-breaking feats from the athletes awarded on Thursday. In particular, Ryan Stafford, the nation’s #3 catcher as ranked by D1Baseball, became Cal Poly’s career doubles leader while four-year veteran and fan favorite Joe Yorke shattered the program’s career RBI mark.
We were well-represented on the All-Big West teams, and there were a lot of deserved awards for our players who had solid seasons. If you look at the honorees, you can see it's heavily comprised of the top teams in the Big West, so it says a lot about the kind of year we had.Cal Poly Baseball Head Coach Larry Lee
Ryan Stafford
Big West Defensive Player of the Year
Stafford, who has received at least one conference nod every year of his career, put an exclamation point on what could be his final season of college baseball before being drafted.
For his prowess behind the dish that earned him a spot on the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, Stafford was honored by the Big West as Defensive Player of the Year after starting all 57 games this season.
The junior backstopper added yet another accolade to his decorated Mustang career, Stafford is also a semi-finalist for the Buster Posey Award.
Nominated for being one of the best catchers in NCAA Division I baseball, pacing the entire conference by a wide margin with 22 runners caught stealing certainly helped Stafford's case.
That also takes him to 45 for his career and third in Cal Poly’s Division I era. Stafford also held a .990 fielding percentage and set a personal career-high 438 putouts.
Alejandro Garza
Big West Freshman Field Player of the Year
A true freshman from Bakersfield, Garza made such an immediate and definitive impact on the Mustangs that head coach Larry Lee trusted him to man third base for the remainder of 2024.
On top of making a surprising amount of highlight-reel athletic plays from the hot corner, Garza was easily one of the team’s most consistent contact hitters day-in and day-out.
Garza collected 20 multi-hit games and at one point held the team’s fourth-longest hitting streak of the season at 10 games.
He was also 3rd on the team with .346 AVG and fourth with 71 H, as well as fifth with 27 R, 28 RBI, and 17 BB.
Most impressively, Garza was the 3rd toughest batter to strikeout in the entirety of Division I baseball after getting sat a paltry 10 times on strikes during 205 at-bats.
Griffin Naess
Big West Freshman Pitcher of the Year
Like his teammate, Naess had a shocking and sudden rise into a regular starting role for the Mustangs after beginning the year as a reliever and pitching well enough to entrench himself in the third spot of Larry Lee’s starting rotation.
Naess’ first career start yielded Cal Poly’s sole series win over a Big-10 team in the program’s D1 era with the Laguna Beach native tossing 5 scoreless innings while allowing only 3 hits to the Ohio State Buckeyes.
However, the Laguna Beach native’s crowning achievement during his freshman year came almost three weeks later. Naess helped throw the program’s first one-hitter since 2005 as the 6-foot-6 right hander held a no-hitter into the game’s final inning alongside posting a personal season-high 7 strikeouts.
Naess finished the season with a 3.58 ERA through 73.0 IP and 62 strikeouts, all coinciding in his flawless 7-0 record.
Alejandro Garza, Jake Steels, and Jakob Wright
All-Big West First Team
Garza (mentioned above) also rightly earned an All-Big West First Team nod alongside Jakob Wright and Jake Steels also making their first career appearance in the list. Wright, a native of the central coast from Paso Robles, came onto the scene during training and conditioning for the 2024 season after posting meager numbers in his 2023 redshirt-freshman season. The southpaw developed remarkable control and led the team in several pitching categories: 2.97 ERA (1st on team, 6th in conference), 101 K (1st team, 1st conference), 9 W (1st team, 2nd conference), and 88.0 IP (1st team, 3rd conference).
The game one and Friday night starter from opening day, Wright is the MLB Pipeline’s 140th ranked draft eligible prospect with a 65-rated slider on the 20-to-80 scouting scale, one of the best single pitch ratings among all 2024 prospects. Wright’s 101 strikeouts, most of which were caused by his high-spin sweeping slider, were just the 12th time since 1970 that the program had a 100 K pitcher.
Steels, in his fourth collegiate season on the central coast after two seasons at Hancock College and 2023 as a Mustang, was everything you wanted in a center fielder this season. He led the team with a .381 AVG, 1.052 OPS, 58 R, 8 HR, and 34 SB. He reached base safely for 45 consecutive games, absolutely unheard of during Cal Poly’s D1 era, while also leading the team with 29 multi-hit games.
Along with eye-popping batting statistics, the veteran outfielder was quite literally flawless from a defensive perspective with a perfect 1.000% fielding percentage. His excellence from the field was not only consistent but in many cases also flashy and awe-inspiring. The centerfield stalwart greatly helped Cal Poly finish the season with the 3rd-best fielding percentage (.982) in Division I.
Ryan Stafford and Joe Yorke
All-Big West Second Team
Simultaneously earning Big West Defensive Player of the year and All-Big West Second Team, Stafford’s merit once again grows during a potential draft season. Joe Yorke, a fourth-year Mustang from Campbell by way of Boise State, also earned his second career all-conference honor after being a First Team honoree in 2022.
Yorke became the second-most tenured player in program history during the season-ending Long Beach State series, having played 220 career games in the Green and Gold. Nearly perfect from first base with a .998 fielding percentage, Yorke was once again fantastic with a bat in his hands, starting all 57 games and compiling a .299 AVG, 66 H, and 12 2B while leading the team with 48 RBI.
Yorke has led a decorated career, shattering the program record for RBIs midway through this season and setting the new mark-to-beat at 176. He batted a career-high .353 average in 2022 en route to an All-Big West First Team nod. He has a .294 career batting average and collected 245 hits, which is also the 3rd highest mark in program history.
Ryan Fenn, Griffin Naess, and Tanner Sagouspe
All-Big West Honorable Mention
Accompanied by Griffin Naess, who took home Freshman Pitcher of the Year honors, the trio of Naess, Ryan Fenn, and Tanner Sagouspe were tabbed as All-Big West Honorable Mentions. This is the first career all-conference honor for Sagouspe and Naess but Fenn’s second nod.
Making a slight defensive adjustment from last year at third base, Fenn had a fantastic season as Cal Poly’s primary second baseman by tallying a .325 AVG, 74 H, and 43 RBIs, which are all in the top-5 on the team. Fenn’s 28 RBIs in a 15-game stretch (5 vs. CSUN on March 16) and 11 RBIs in the four-game week against UNLV and CSUN helped net him a Big West Field Player of the Week Award.
Tanner Sagouspe made the transition from two-way player to full-time closer this year as Cal Poly’s go-to arm late in games. His 3.23 ERA was good enough to lead all Mustang relievers while also leading the bullpen with 28 APP, 9 SV, 54 SO, and .207 B/AVG.
He was massive reason the Mustangs pulled off the ranked series win over #25 UC Santa Barbara with back-to-back days of relief appearances in which he pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings while allowing just 3 total hits.
