bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie baseball head coach Rocky Ward throughout the 2008 season as the Aggies open their third season in the WAC. This week Coach Ward recaps the wild series against Ball State, talks about the Alumni game on Saturday and takes a look at next week's six games in Fresno for the Pepsi Johnny Quik tournament.
Also See: Gary and Rocky Ward talk with bleedCrimson.net about the College Baseball Hall of Fame
bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about this weekend's series and then we'll talk about each game individually.
Rocky Ward: The series as a whole was maybe the craziest weekend I've ever played. I thought last weekend there were a lot of runs scored against New Orleans but you look up, the average score per team is 15. The average game score if you put it all together is 16-15 for all four days. That's kind of crazy. Our offensive ballclub is proving to be dominant. Now, nobody averages 15 runs per game, the offensive conditions were prime, the humidity levels were down and the wind blew pretty hard on Sunday. There was a light breeze on Saturday that impacted the games, the only normal game was the 8-7 game on Friday.
Overall, it was a crazy weekend and once again we're disappointed we didn't close out the last game. We had the game in hand in the 6th inning. They do a great job on the mound on their part and we didn't do a real good job hitting wise in the last innings of the game and they just keep coming and all of the sudden, we kind of get stabilized and then baseball gets up and bites you. They basically did not hit a single ball hard in the entire ninth inning in which they scored five to take the lead. They dumped one to left, the wind changed direction and that cold front that we saw last night came in towards the late part of the game. So it'd been blowing out to right and then within that inning in the ninth, the wind is blowing pretty much in from left across the field and it impacted the game. Like I said baseball will step up and bite you. They have a ball that's hit to left, the wind just knocks down, my left field can't get to it. It's a regular fly ball that the wind just killed, it just kind of parachuted in there, that was a key hit in their inning that kind of got them going. Then in the bottom of the ninth [Marcos] Rosales hits a line drive down the right field line that misses fair by about two inches and the wind pushed that ball foul.
That's what you sometimes as coaches, you look at the two influential plays. Our ball is hit on a rocket and their is dumped and their meant more. That's kind of the way it is. Obviously we didn't pitch well this weekend. When you look at the overall stats, both teams did kind of the same thing. We hit .393, they hit .404, they out-doubled us by two, out-homered us by two. But had the same number of RBIs, the same number of walks, everything was pretty even when it was all said and done.
They were a better offensive ballclub than I expected them to be. I still think New Orleans was better, they had better athletes, better ability to hit for power. The only disappointment I have with the whole weekend series is that every time we kind of had them handled, we had a bad pitch or we walked somebody or we hit somebody. We kind of jump started too many of their innings for them and didn't make them build enough of their own through being patient and getting basehits, we kind of helped them out a little bit. Defense wasn't great but it was better than the weekend before.
In a four game series, I'm telling you what, I don't know how we're going to do this. Four nine-inning games, to do this every weekend through the offense is going to be exhausting. Especially when you play basically four three and a half to four and a half hour games.
bc.net: Especially with the 24-19 first half of a double header.
RW: Yeah the second one was a little better, we lose that one 12-6 and led the game 6-1. Sebastian Vendette was a little sick and could not go on Friday so we bring Dillon Smith in on the Friday game, move him to the start and he gives us a good quality start and we win a reasonably normal baseball game with two good offenses with an 8-7 final.
Then you come back the next day and they got after us early in that game. [Oliver] Webster just got rocked. Everything he threw got hit and everything they hit went in the hole. One of those pitching nightmare games where he didn't pitch poorly, they just got hot on him and he couldn't get them stopped. That's kind of the type of pitcher he is anyway, he's a command pitcher, he throws strikes, doesn't walk many people and puts the ball in play. He got the ball in the middle of the plate too much and he didn't have a good breaking ball and didn't have control of the change, to compound itself. You look up and when all the dust settle you win it 24-19, it was almost a replay of the Sunday New Orleans game except we won this one. We went down early and managed to get back and this time we got back and got past them and held. We got a good appearance from Nyquist in his first outing.
Then in game three, [Sebastien] Vendette is our number one, going against their number three. You feel like you have a real good advantage, your'e 2-0 in the series, played a regular game in game one and then kind of crazy one where you kind of stole one back from them in game two, you have everything in your favor. Then through three innings we lead the game 6-1, Vendette's pitching pretty good and then all of the sudden he just loses it. Now he's got a cold or something and his energy levels may have left him, I don't really know but he lost focus and we give up a four-spot and let them back in the game and basically the bottom line is we didn't score from the fourth through the ninth. They had a couple pretty good arms that they went to. In fact it was 12-6 in the bottom of the eight with the bases loaded and they bring their closer in. They've got a kid that holds the school record for saves and most of the time you don't bring him in six runs but that's how concerned they about our offense. He was pretty good, he came out and did a good job. The first pitch he threw was hit hard but it was right at somebody. Then we couldn't get anything going against him in the ninth and we lose 12-6. You kinda feel like you handed the game back to them. The game they gave you just a few hours ago you turn right back around and give it back to them. You're disappointed with it but that's kind of part of the game. They're playing hard and by that time we had gained some respect for them as I told you we for New Orleans. They had every reason in the world to lay over and that's kind of why we're disappointed with what Sebastian did. He's your ace with a 6-1 lead, all he has to do is relax and throw strikes and not start an inning for them and that's the opposite of what he did. So that's the way that one turns out.
Then Sunday's game was just a wild one all along. A bunch of runs scored in the first three innings on both clubs and we played significantly down. It's a game that I believe we trailed by eight and led by 10 at one point and you lose it by one. That doesn't happen very often. Again I had the same feeling that I did off the New Orleans game. We're still pretty young, pretty inexperienced pitching staff, guys are still trying to get to the mound and we didn't get a very good performance out of some guys. We did get back to Nyquist but he'd thrown four innings to close out the game one of the Saturday game so we had to wait a little bit longer. We couldn't bring him in in the seventh like you'd like to because he wouldn't have enough left. I was a little concerned about bringing him in when we did. That's why Anthony Arrieta went out and pitched reasonably, gave up a couple runs but with a 10 run lead you throw strikes and that's what he did. So we bring him out in the ninth expecting to throws strikes and he walks a guy and hits a guy and then they dump the ball to left, a ball of the end of the bat and they got something going. If they're gonna beat you, all you want is to make sure they do it to you and you don't do it to yourself. And we did it to ourself.
We're disappointed with 4-3 but the two opponents we've faced are high level opponents. Ball State's gonna do well this year. They've got a quality offense, they were a little shaky on defense and their 2B had a bad series. He made an error in the first game that basically opened the floodgates and cost them the game. If he had made that play we could have lost three out of four.
bc.net: Can you talk about coming back from an 11 run deficit and then giving up a 10 run lead? That's not something you see very often and it happened in one weekend.
RW: There was also a play in the Sunday game that was a key play. It was the first inning that they didn't score, they had men at first and second and a guy hits a soft liner to center and our second baseman is playing way up the middle, we had a pretty good chart on him. He made a diving play on it but the ball went of his glove. Well the guy at second stayed because he thought it might get caught and the guy at first didn't. So the ball goes of the guy's glove and [Richard] Stout's right there, picks it up runs to second base, tags second which makes the guy coming from first out and then turns to his right and the guy that was coming back, originally on second, you tag him for an unassisted double play on a crazy crazy play. Beyond that I think Stout tagged both guys six times trying to convince the umpire that they're both out. The umpire had it but Stout kept telling him "I got them both, I got them both" and he looks at him and say "I got it, don't worry about it, you're out, you're out." It was kinda funny. There were a lot of crazy things that occurred and no you can't expect to come from behind as often as we have, not on a consistent basis. We need to retool a little bit with our pitching staff. We've got a little better each day defensively even though we continue to make a few mistakes. Marcus hasn't played well at third but Auten has played outstanding at first. He's played I believe errorless so far. Marquez and Stout in the middle have played seven games with only one error apiece. To get that kind of defense out of those two is good. Our problem has been Marcus making his transition from first to third and eventually he'll be okay. He needs one of those games where he makes a couple of plays and gains some confidence. We actually didn't start him in the Sunday game and gave Downing the start and a combination of things happened in that first inning where Scaperotta lost a ball in the sun, which was the second time he's done it this year. It happened in Saturday's game against New Orleans with [Heath] Goin on the mound. The same thing happens again which costs us, what should've been a no runs scored, turns into a four or five run innings. Then Geoff in his first start didn't play very relaxed and so with the quality we have, if guys don't come ready do play, I have guys that I can go to on the bench. So we made a move to take the All-American out of center field and let guys know they've gotta come to play. That'll be the strength of this team eventually. Guys know that if they're not ready physically and mentally to play, there's somebody there waiting to take their shot that can do just as well.
In that transition, Marcus was immediately put back into the game as the third baseman and played a good solid game, went 4 for 5 with four or five RBIs. Sometimes that's what you need, you need to be waken up a little bit. Sometimes not starting a game let's you mentally relax a little bit.
We would have been really happy, as all of our fans would, to be sitting here 5-2. Considering the way some of the games have come down it could have been 2-5 if we hadn't been so doggone good offensively. But to be at 5-2 with four or five days off before we play again we would have been real happy. 4-3 we've still got a lot of work to do. We have some concerns with our pitching staff, they haven't been near as bad as the numbers show, we played against two very good offensive ballclubs. We haven't played great defense behind them. We got a lot of kids going to the mound for their first Division I appearances and they're trying to ease their way into it and become a little more comfortable with the higher level of play. So a lot of things have been accomplished in the last couple weekends.
It's a good time for us to go on the road. When you go on roadtrips the squad gets pared down as a coach you have less people to manage. The road does one of two things to teams. It either pulls them further apart or brings them closer together. At home kids are dorms or in apartments, they're spread throughout town they can continue their daily every day life outside of the game. On the road you're together. In this case we'll be together for seven days in a row. We'll get to know each other on a more personal basis, tie into each other a little bit better. So it's a good time for it.
We're going to have to do a really good job of supporting this pitching staff that hasn't been very good but they haven't been as their number say. And I'll tell you the same thing, our offense isn't as good as the numbers are. We still have things that we have to do better. We've hit into some real good conditions. We have yet to hit on a day when the humidity is high and the wind's blowing in. Can we generate other ways other than the home run and the double to score runs in tough offensive situations? We'll see. Fresno's a unique place. It's a fair ballpark but it's like a lot of ballparks, they get some windy conditions there. They're out in the plains and off the coast in the farm country of California. There are days there where the wind could be blowing in at 20, it could be blowing out at 20 or it could be blowing across, you just never know, it's just kind of luck of the draw what kind of offensive/defensive conditions you're going to get. When we played there last year their field was very hard and it played very fast.
We'll go on the road, get resettled, restructure a few guys on the mound, give them their second and third opportunities and see if we can get the going. If this pitching staff can get going and get feeling like they can pitch again, because I guarantee not one of them feels that way now. It's just like hitters in a slump. You can be a kid who's hit .500 his entire life but if you go 0 for your last 10 you're not sure when you're next hit's coming. That's kind of where we are.
We need to go into Fresno with the mindset that we're going to play hard defensively and continue to see what we can do on the offensive side and see if we can provide some support for this pitching staff while they make the transition to being better players.
bc.net: After two weekends of play, who are the players who have stood out to you and who are the guys you're looking to get a little more out of?
RW: Position player wise, Chris Auten has established himself as not only a middle of the lineup hitter but we didn't really know what kind of defender he was going to be. He came in here with an arm injury and wasn't able to do a lot of defensive stuff. It was probably the best thing that could have happened to him because he couldn't throw but he could work on his footwork. He spent a lot of his time, late fall in particular, working on his footwork around the bag and dealing with the ground ball and not worrying about throwing the baseball and I think that's helped him. In the seven games he's played he's an outstanding defender. He's a plus defender, we were just hoping he'd be adequate.
[Bryan] Marquez has been outstanding as a 2B. He's made one error and had several fabulous plays. He turns the double play very very well, as good as I've had a guy in a while and he's swung the heck out of the bat. He's been an offensive force in the bottom of the lineup.
Richard Stout and Joseph Scaperotta are both kids that we've returned that have already been there, done that and they continue to play up to their capabilities so we're pleased with that.
Our catching corps has been good, [Joe] Leghorn had a tough first series against New Orleans both as a catch and throw guy, we gave up 17 stolen bases, and he didn't swing the bat very well but he had a good series with the bat and I think we only gave up three stolen bases this weekend. Our pitching staff did a better job of holding runners.
Paul Moreno a left-handed hitting outfielder that's had a couple starts. He's a good runner. But he's a freshman that transferred in in the midterm so we didn't expect a whole lot out of him but he's really played well when he's had his opportunities. He's had some key basehits, I'm happy with what he's done.
We're still trying to get [Franky] Busani and [Gavin] Heineman and [Trevor] Bloom stabilized. We're starting to trust them a little bit more as defenders than we did in the beginning of the season, they're working hard at it. They're all big offensive type outfielders but they gotta go catch the normal stuff that should get caught and they did a good job of that this weekend.
Marcos Rosales, we really thought he'd be a key type player because he was an infielder last year and we moved him to the outfield and he's really solidified our defense in the outfield and we know he can play the infield. So he gives us a player that is a real quality utility type player. He's actually played a little bit more than I wanted to. He's a small bodied guy that last year we had to play him every day and I think we wore him out. As a result, this is a kid I think can hit .325, he hit .280 but I just think because we could never get any chance to rest him, and he's a 100% effort guy, his talent's okay but he's got to play hard every time for him to be a quality player in the program. Guys like that, full effort guys, they get worn out, they get tired.
Guys like Scaperotta, they learn that they can find times throughout the course of the game that they can play at about 70%, conserve some energy and nobody notices it. Coaches notice it sometimes when they need to get him picked up and moving again. Quality athletes learn how to stay healthy and stay fresh.
I understand Marcos, I was the same type of player. When I went out on the yard, I had to play full out as hard as I could play in order to compete with the guys I was playing with and when I tried to play at 80%, I wasn't good enough. So he's done what we've expected him to do and more.
Pitching staff wise, Erik Nyquist is a guy we recruited to come in as a closer, didn't do well through the fall and the spring but rolls around and gets his opportunity and closes a game for us this weekend and helps himself a lot.
Jeremy Joustra has been really good on the mound. He's showed that he can have dominant type stuff.
The other guys, the rest of the pitching staff has to pick it up a little bit. I don't think that we have but a couple power guys who can go out and start a game and throw 120 pitches. I think we have a lot of guys that are good college pitchers that if we can keep them at 60 or 80 pitches, don't let the opposing team see them the third at bat, two time through the lineup guys.
We may be a little bit different looking in the way we handle our pitching staff more around eight guys all of which can start or all of which can pitch in the middle. Eventually you'd like to feel like you have a consistent start group but I'm not so sure in four game series or six game weeks like we're getting ready to do for the next four weeks that that's a reasonable thing to ask.
We think we can go against Fresno in the opening day with Sturdevant. Vendette will go on Tuesday against Indiana and then from there the other six guys, it'll depend on which of those six guys were needed on top of the first two guys. We think that Vendette and Sturdevant are legitimate starters, they have experience to do it. The other guys are legitimate as well but they aren't the power pitchers that these guys are.
As soon as we come back, we play six, Monday through Saturday, then we come back and we have Sunday and Monday off, then we have a double header against New Mexico. And off of that double header, we have San Jose.
bc.net: With these weeks like you've got coming up basically the next three weeks (17 games through the end of March), where do you find time to get practice in and training in with your guys?
RW: You dont. To be honest you don't. It won't impact us quite as much as other clubs because we've always used our pregame batting practice as instructional sessions. It's not just warming up for us, there's teaching during that time. We've always used that period of time to make people better. A lot of people do it to get ready, to warm up for the game. We've always used it as another opportunity to teach and to get players to make mechanical adjustments so I don't think it'll impact us as much as other people.
The game itself still teaches more than anything you can teach in practice. I still kind of believe when it's all said and done I'll look back at it and say that the three weeks extra that I got to work with these kids, that practice time was more valuable than what I may have lost during the season.
Again, pregame stuff you can still work with guys, you've got 45 minutes for BP. Kids are taking ground balls and fly balls during that time. You can go work with a player during batting practice on some things that he needs to work on. So there's still time to do that. And to be honest with you, even in the old schedule, most of our concerns in between series are making sure everybody gets their legs back under them, making sure everybody is healthy, making sure that everybody stays fresh. So if you play a three game series under the old format, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then Monday's an off day, you don't do anything, one day a week's required to be off by the NCAA, Tuesday would be normal play day and Wednesday would be your only practice day because Thursday you don't want to push kids too much, you want their bodies to be fresh for Friday. If we're going to lose anything, we're going to lose one day a week in a real full fledged practice, things that can be recouped just in pregame stuff anyway.
bc.net: What are you looking to get out of this weekend's alumni game, kind of a chance to have some fun?
RW: The Saturday game with alumni, for the first time will be purely fun. I've gotten Jesse French, a local banker in town, he's spearheaded a lot of this stuff getting players here. I asked him four years ago, I said Jess I need you to put together as good a team you can because I want to open the season with the alumni game as we did before. I want to put guys in uniforms with umpires, I want to go through our first pregame and get some of the nervous jitters out of the way and I want to have a real competitive contest, I wanna put my best players out there. So I felt like it was an important game for preseason prep. This one doesn't have that. I can't use any of my starting pitchers for the week on that day, they all have to be ready to go. So we'll use some kids who haven't got to pitch very much, they should benefit from that. From the standpoint of the players, to honor my former players, I'll start my starting nine but they're not going to be there long. Last year I started my starting nine and once the game was won I started my substitutions. This year will be managed differently, I've got to make sure people stay healthy and make it a little bit more of a fun type of event.
bc.net: Can you talk a little bit about the upcoming week in the Fresno State tournament and what are your goals for the week?
RW: The goals that are set ahead of us are to stabilize the pitching staff and get them to a point where they feel like they're adequate again. If that means we have to tandem pitch a few games like I referred to earlier or we have to make sure we don't extend guys too much and use more pitchers per game than what you normally would then what we'll do. But we need to get these kids' psyche reworked. To be be completely honest, I'm kinda hopeful we go into Fresno and we have three, four, five days with little wind or with a wind blowing in. I think my offense needs to be reminded that they're not as good as their numbers are, I don't want them to become overconfident. Overconfident players become stupid players and they start to disrespect the game. All of the sudden you look up and you lose a couple of games because you didn't play as hard as you needed to.
Now do I want us to go out and score 10 runs a game? You bet I do, but I don't want it to be as easy as it has been. I want to continue to put pressure on my offensive guys to get better and better and better. Because there are days in the game of baseball where everybody does what they're supposed to do and you hit 12 line rockets and they're all caught. We need to play a 4-2 game where, not where we don't perform well but where we hit into some bad luck and we find a way to win.
And if the pitching staff feels like they have real influence on the game, that's the type of game that can bring both aspects of the ballclub to more of a consistent center.
The competition is good. Fresno obviously will be a challenge right off the bat.
Indiana is a good quality club out of a major conference.
Portland has absolutely lit it up. Now they're 6-3 but they've played a very difficult schedule and already have a couple victories over Top 25 guys. On paper they're probably have one of the better clubs they've had in a while.
Gonzaga just beat BYU two out of three at home. It's a question mark on how good BYU is this year. That's one of the problems, you don't really know how good your opponents are right now. You know what the traditions are. If you're going to go out and play Arizona State and Arizona and they're ranked #1 and #2, the history and tradition says they're pretty good.
Utah still hasn't won but Utah is kind of one of those traditional opponents that we've played consistently over the years and they've always given us trouble. So the one team that looks like they're weak based on the way they've played and based on their record, is the team that has always played good against us.
I think it's a real good challenge. I don't think there's anybody in the tournament we can't handle. More than anything, the long run of this stuff is it gives me a chance to get my ballclub on the field of the preseason #1 team in the conference and play in that facility for six days and get comfortable with that ballpark so that when we come back in there in another month or so to play the four conference games, it won't be all new to us.
