Four Mustangs Featured in D1Baseball Midseason Positional Rankings Update
3/31/2026 7:00:00 AM | Baseball
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Four Cal Poly baseball players have landed on D1Baseball.com's various lists of top 50 rankings for each of the positions (100 for starting pitchers and outfielders) six weeks into the 2026 season.
The highest-ranked Mustang is senior right-hander Nick Bonn at No. 8 on the top 50 list of relief pitchers. The transfer from Dallas Baptist leads the nation in saves with eight after Sunday's two scoreless innings in a 12-8 win at UC Riverside.
Checking in at No. 43 on the list of third basemen is junior Alejandro Garza while sophomore Nate Castellon is pegged at No. 45 on the shortstop rankings. Finally, junior righty Griffin Naess has earned the No. 77 slot among starting pitchers.
Also the Big West leader in saves, Bonn has struck out 19 batters over 22 innings and sports a 2.45 ERA in 12 appearances on the mound as Cal Poly sits atop the conference standings at 10-2 and is 16-10 for the season.
Bonn pitched last season at Dallas Baptist after spending his first two collegiate campaigns at Pepperdine. He is a 2022 graduate of Laguna Beach High School in Orange County.
Garza, who has started Cal Poly's last 11 games at second base after making 15 starts at third base, has been on a tear lately at the plate. Hitting .267 after the Cal State Bakersfield series, Garza has gone 18-for-32 (.563) over his last seven games to lift his average 79 points to .343.
The run includes a trio of four-hit games and Garza became the first Mustang in 15 years to produce back-to-back four-hit efforts last weekend in the UC Riverside series. He leads the Mustangs with 25 RBIs and has struck out just seven times in 127 plate appearances, 14th in the nation.
Castellon sports a .339 batting average with a team-leading 11 doubles and has struck out just three times in 130 plate appearances, third-best in the country. He also has come alive at the plate over the last three weeks, going 21-for-53 (.405) to lift his average 53 points.
Naess improved his win-loss record to 4-1 and lowered his ERA to 3.69 with his fourth quality start of the year at UC Riverside last Friday, allowing just three runs and four hits over six innings.
Now 18-4 with a 3.75 ERA in his three-year Mustang career, Naess shattered his career high for strikeouts with 14 in a win over Washington State on Feb. 20. His previous career high was seven and he has 40 strikeouts and just 15 walks over 39 innings this season.
D1Baseball.com ranked Cal Poly No. 6 among 47 Division I baseball programs in the West Region last week.
The Mustangs, who have won each of their four conference series so far this year, including sweeps against Hawai'i and Cal State Bakersfield, return to action Tuesday at Fresno State and will host UC Santa Barbara in the annual renewal of the Blue-Green Rivalry, a three-game Big West series Thursday through Saturday inside Baggett Stadium.
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