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 Pepsi Johnny Quik Tournament in Fresno and talks about this week's games against Rio Grande Rival UNM and opening the conference season against San Jose State.
bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk a little bit about last week's tournament overall?
Rocky Ward: Overall the competition was good and it was a unique format because you played Monday through Saturday, six days in a row. Pitching rotations were all kind of messed up. Indiana came in and played two games against Fresno before the tournament and Indiana and Gonzaga had played games before the tournament so everybody came in on different rotations. When you look at the game scores there were a lot of unbalanced games scores based on pitching mismatches that you wouldn't normally see in a conference weekend where generally ones are against ones and four are against fours. So it was kind of a first time for me to deal with that. I know when we go back and look at it, we probably drew the toughest pitchers in the tournament. We faced Portland's #1, we faced Indiana's #1 and #2, Utah's #1 and Fresno's #3. I don't think we faced anybody that wasn't one of the top three pitchers from an opponent. I don't know if that was done purposely or if it was just random, probably a little bit of both. Overall in the tournament we swung the bats reasonably well and averaged about 7 or 8 runs per game, we didn't swing them great, we were okay. We didn't pitch well at all and we didn't play very good defense at key times.
bc.net: The first game you played you took on Fresno State and you were able to beat them 13-8, can you talk about that game and the confidence that it gives you heading into conference play?
RW: Guys got up for the game because Fresno was the conference champion a year ago and you're gonna play them eight more times. We catch their #3 guy and we're at least on paper throwing our #4 and it was a pretty good game. Wilson gave us a good solid start, it was a little shaky but it was solid. He went five innings gave up five runs, he walked seven but he struck out five and we scored along the way. It was a little bit of an event, there were a couple lead changes and guys handled it pretty good. We got a big double out of Rosales in the big inning that gave us the lead. We scored first, gave up the lead then had the big inning that kind of made the difference and were able to hold on at the end with a reasonably good performance. So it was a good start for the tournament. It was a good baseball game, maybe the best game of the week from both sides. It gives some confidence in the league.
bc.net: In the second game you faced Indiana, you lost 16-4 but really the difference in that game is the 11 run sixth inning by Indiana.
RW: Yeah. That's been our achilles heel all year, giving up the big inning. That was kind of the combination of defensive failures, giving up three or four errors in the inning but we also set up the inning by walking a guy and hitting a guy. Indiana was really pretty impressive. They're real athletic, they had a good kid on the mound, they had their #1 going and it was a good game through five. That's just what's happened a couple times. I was really disappointed in our offense, I thought we had the game in control and had we put up a big inning in the fourth or fifth, which we just did not do, we could have gotten control of the game. Instead they struck first and we couldn't stop the bleeding and you look up and the game's basically over after they score 11 and some of our defensive difficulties we've had this year came out and haunted us. A combination of pitchers losing command and walking a couple guys and then when the ball does get put in play, the defenders just not making plays. It was a very difficult field to play. It was very very hard. It was much faster than what astroturf would have normally played. The front dirt area in front of home plate may just have well been a concrete pad because balls hit off that front area they're normally just regular routine ground balls and were bounding 50, 60, 70 feet in the air. In fact, the real big basehit in that inning, all those runs were scored with two outs. We had first and second two outs a guy hits a chopper off the plate to Quade at third that was so high in the air, it just didn't come down in time to make a play and instead of just holding the ball like he should have, he tried to rush the throw and threw the ball away. Not only did they get a hit on what was a good pitch from the mound, we turned it into a couple runs by throwing the ball away. And then we get another play almost replicating it, this time the ball wasn't as high and there was a play and Marcus threw that one away as well and that opened the floodgates. He was one of the best first basemen in the league a year ago and he's making the transition to third base and it's been a little bit rough. His numbers are not good at all, he's made 12 errors in 13 games but the odd part about that day is that he made two or three really fabulous plays before that happened. I think the inexperience of knowing he just needed to hold the ball on that play, kinda brought things back and the wheels came off a little bit and you feel like you handed a game away, even though I felt like Indiana was the most athletic team there. They ran well, they had good power and good balance throughout their lineup and they had really had some problems playing defense. They're a northern team that's coming off not being outside at all. After they played us they kind of stabilized and they went on to win three of the next four and played very well in the tournament.
bc.net: In your next game you faced Utah and lost 8-5 can you talk about that game?
RW: The Utah game we didn't play very well overall. I think the Fresno game kind of got us righted from what we felt like when we didn't play very well in the last two against Ball State. Defense and pitching kind of got us in trouble in those two and I think it carried over into Utah. This game was played at 10 in the morning which means you're up at 7 to eat and sports are difficult and a lot of people may not understand this but they're not really made to be played in the morning. In baseball in particular you play in the afternoon and evenings and your body kind of gets conditioned for that type of schedule so 10 a.m. games are always kind of tough to get your blood flowing so to speak. They kinda got out on us a little bit and we didn't do a good job in that game early. The final score was 8-5. One of the things that happened in that game, and I'd been concerned about it happening, the offense was eventually going to feel like they were going to have to score 15 runs every time out. There were a couple innings early in that game where we should have scored and we didn't. Situations like man on second with nobody out where all you have to do is advance him to third, we don't like to do that with the bunt. We'd much prefer our right handed guys hit it to the right side of the field, they get a hit, they got an RBI, if they don't they've moved the runner and we haven't given up an out. So we didn't execute a couple innings. We'd been really really good offensively moving runners from second to third with nobody out, scoring runners from third with less than two outs, baseball game situations where all you have to do is put the ball in play. The infield is playing back, take those free runs just by executing the game properly. We didn't do a good job there and they did. That's really the difference in the game. We trailed that game 8-0 until the 7th and then put a five spot on the board and basically got back into it, at the same time, didn't quite have enough to finish it. They brought a real good closer and shut us down in the last part. We scored five in the top of the eighth. You get back to 8-5 but we only had one more inning and couldn't get anything going in the ninth. Sturdevant in that game didn't pitch great. He kinda pitched into some bad luck. He goes five innings, gives up five hits, gives up five runs, that's a 9.0 ERA. It's another game where they got some hard ground balls that went through the infield, a couple bonus hits where they were pretty good pitches. When you look at the game, there are only two extra basehits by them. A double and a homerun that was hit off of [Dillon] Smith. Dillon Smith came in and kind of hit into some bad luck. They had a three run inning in the bottom of the sixth against Smith where they really didn't hit a ball hard. He walked a guy, the only guy he walked, then they hit a ball down the line and scored a run, that type of inning. We just kind of made the move offensively a little too late. It was the first run during the year where we went six or seven innings and didn't score and a lot of that was because we didn't execute early. From a coaching standpoint it's an opportunity to teach and tell guys "I told you, you've had things going pretty good, basehits have been falling and you've been scoring runners in game situations. But when you don't do that, you don't take the runs the defense gives to you, you put yourself in trouble." And it did. It was an 8-5 loss but we never really challenged in the game.
bc.net: Your game against Portland you win 10-1 and Heath Goin pitches seven innings and doesn't give up any runs.
RW: The Portland game was important because Portland and Fresno State were the two higher RPI teams going into the tournament. Portland really opened the year off good and they had their #1 lefthander going against us and it was the first lefthanded starter we faced. We needed a good outing from Goin and have gave it to us. We go out and he goes seven innings seven hits and no walks. We put up a seven run inning in the third where we didn't really hit a ball hard. We drew a couple walks, executed the game pretty well. They made a couple errors, in fact only two of the seven runs were earned but we took advantage of the mistakes from the opponent which we didn't do in the previous two days. So at that stage of the tournament you're 2-2, you've got wins over the two higher ranked opponents, you can maybe forgive yourself a little bit for the two that you kind of handed away and you move forward. It was a good game and we felt pretty good about it.
Then we came back the next day against Gonzaga and we did it again. You don't get a good start out of Sebastien, we give up the big inning again. We give up a three run second and a six run third and you're down 9-2 in the third inning and you're playing catchup. In that game we only errored once and it was meaningless. We actually played very good defense. Sebastien didn't pitch well. He went 2 1/3, gave up six hits, walked three, struck out none. The first three innings for them were started with a walk and a hit batsman. But it's almost like an identical inning three innings in a row. We get a break in the first because we get one out with bases loaded and then we get a comebacker to the mound and get a double play and end the inning. Then we turn around and we set up the same scenario for them the next two innings and the difference is the ball that's hit up the middle gets through and they score three and we score one so it's 3-1 and the games okay. But then we go back again and we go 0-2 on the first hitter and then walk him on four straight pitches and then we go 0-2 on the next hitter and hit him in the foot with a breaking ball. All of the sudden you're in the fifth game of the tournament and your starter's out after two and there's not a whole lot of bullpen left. So had to roll some guys through and nobody had any real success. We actually made it a decent game with four in the bottom of the sixth to make it 11-6. We always feel like if we're within three, four or five runs, it never surprises us to score a four or five run inning. Instead we give up another big inning in the seventh where they score five. The Gonzaga game was real disappointing because we had a chance going into that day, Portland was playing Indiana right before us and Indiana beat Portland. If Portland had won that game and we beat Gonzaga, we would have been in the championship. We knew that we couldn't athletically be in a championship even if we beat Gonzaga and that's no excuse but it is something that if you set goals and all of the sudden the goals aren't attainable it's pretty difficult. You have to learn as players to retool quickly and reset new goals, that's what you do. Either that or you sink and we sunk in the first two or three innings of that game. We pitched within reason to that point and what caused us trouble was defense. A couple of plays weren't made and a couple errors. This game was a pitching game, we got nothing out of anybody that went to the mound that day. Gonzaga's a good offensive ballclub.
bc.net: Your last game you played Indiana again.
RW: Yeah and all of the sudden we catch their #2 guy. And we're starting Webster who's kind of a spot starter. He got hit hard. That was a game that again, we open up with two, they score two in the bottom [of the first], then we go up 3-2 in the third and they tie it up in the fourth so it's 4-4 game in the fourth and we felt like we matched up with them well. The Tufts kid is the kid who got the start against Fresno and did a pretty good job in the loss. The kid's 91-92 with a good slider and kind of surprised us, he didn't use the breaking ball against Fresno and all of the sudden he's using the curve ball against us. I thought we did a reasonably good job against him. We took him six innings and he threw 125 pitches. We made every out tough, the problem was again the big inning that kills us. We gave up nine in the bottom of the fifth. Most of them were earned, we made a couple errors late in the inning that gave them the eighth and ninth runs that extended the game out to a nine run lead. Either way a nine run lead or seven run lead is still a pretty good lead in the middle of a baseball game. The achilles heel came back and got us again. The inability of stopping an opponent offensively that's on a run. You usually do that by making a plus play, you either do that through the double play or the strikeout. We just didn't get that done. Joustra came in in the inning and only ended up getting one out. He got a couple ground balls, one that he's gotta take responsibility for and one that our defender, it was kind of a ball hit off the end of the bat and it had a lot of spin on it and he just misplayed it. It should have been a double play. Instead it turns into an error and extends the inning.
Those are just parts of where we are right now as a ballclub. It's still a very good offensive club even though we didn't perform terribly well on the weekend. Rosales, Marquez and Scaperotta who had been hitting in the mid 300's to 400 up to that point, those three guys combined to hit about .200 for the week, they had really down week. At the same time Marcus Quade and Tyler Hart had really good weeks. Trevor Bloom got his second and third starts and he swung the bat well in the first two games but then I gave him back-to-back-to-back starts. Scaperotta had hurt his quad in the Gonzaga game and was real sore and couldn't play on Saturday and Bloom got his third start in a row and he had a freshman day at the plate. He struck out a couple times with runners on base where we could have had an opportunity to score. You say freshman day, he had a couple lights-out days back to back, then all of the sudden he had an opportunity to impact the game twice. They were both RBI situations with multiple runners on base. You're kind of looking at the worst case scenario as a ground ball advances runners and scores them or a sac fly. In both cases he did what you cannot do and that's strike out. So he kind of came back to earth a little bit for that particular game. He had the dreaded 0-5 with three strikeouts. So, that's kind of part of the deal with younger players. He would not have started that day if Scaperotta had been healthy. I think most coaches in most sports understand that freshman can play at a very high level but it's hard for them to do it on a real consistent basis day in and day out.
The week was a 2-4 week which we're obviously not happy with but the two power rating games, the two games against the two best clubs, we played well and won, we just did not win the games that we were supposed to and that was because we didn't play well. We're 6-7 but we have yet to have a team beat us. That's good and bad. There's not a team that's just lined us up and beat us. We've made mistakes that have opened up and allowed teams to take the lead against us. That's part of the fact that we're kinda young in a couple spots, we're pretty new as a ballclub, we're still trying to gel as teammates. All the kids individually are quality kids and have good character and good attitudes but eventually you have to get them to trust each other and be willing to forgive each other's mistakes. That's the big thing among teammates, everyone's gonna make mistakes. When you have a feeling when the hitter goes to the plate everybody believes he's gonna get a hit and when he doesn't that's just part of the game or if a guy's got a play he's getting ready to make and everybody believes he's gonna make that play, we're not quite there yet. There hasn't been enough consistency with this team so that there's enough faith that every time a guy goes to the plate he's gonna get a hit or everytime there's a play he's gonna make it so that's what we're looking at this week.
We've got two tomorrow against New Mexico. They're a solid baseball team. It'll be real interesting to get a comparison to what we've played to this point. They've kind of played an odd schedule. They swept Eastern Michigan to open the season, but Eastern Michigan is a 1-7 team. So those games are not quality wins, but then they get Texas Tech at home and beat them, but at the same time Texas Tech is around .500 so it's hard to really say how good they are right now. They had a good series against Texas State where they won two out of three. Then they went to Arizona State and got beat by the #1 team in the country, who's beating everybody. We're both teams right now that are kind of in the same position. They're 9-8 so they're above .500 but they just lost two out of three to UNLV to open the conference season at home. We're 6-7 and getting ready to open conference this upcoming weekend. The New Mexico/New Mexico State games are always interesting contests. There's a lot at stake in the kids minds. The only disappointment from a coaching standpoint is that these games don't really have anything to say if you're going to go to regional or not. They're not conference games. I think both teams are in a transition point, we both need to sweep these games. We both don't need to go 0-2 and we both don't need to split. I think both ballclubs are looking for a nice little run here. They're getting ready to go to TCU next week so they're looking to extend a one game streak to a three game streak and going on the road against one of the better teams in the league, same deal, we're coming off a couple losses in a row trying to get a streak going into four pretty important games against San Jose at home. SJSU is leading the league both in league record at 3-1, they beat Sacramento three out of four this weekend, as well as overall record I think they're 10-4.
The Portland game was so important because Portland had beat San Jose State, Sacramento State and Fresno State and Hawai'i. Portland had beaten four teams in league, we're the only team in our league to have beaten Portland. San Jose is still a club, we need to play well in this next six game set. That's kind of how we're looking at it. We've got these six, followed by the next five with New Mexico on the road and Texas Pan-Am at home, then another six game set and that's kind of how the rest of the year is gonna go. We've got to do a little bit better job of maintaining consistency defensively and getting better starting pitching.
bc.net: From a confidence standpoint, how important was the Portland game for your pitching staff, to be able to go out and get a game where you only give up one run?
RW: Well it's funny, we had a shutout until late, they dumped a couple balls in and we didn't make a play, we made an error late that kind of helped set the inning up. So the guys really wanted the shutout. It's kind of a tradition, we've always had a running deal with the pitchers that if they shut somebody out, they get to hit batting practice the next day so they were smelling the chance to swing the bats. Pitchers in college don't hit very often. They all think they can hit as many home runs as we can. It always ends up being a fun deal. But they didn't get the chance to do that. At the time I thought it was important. I thought it was really important for the psyche of the ballclub. But then you turn around off that game and give up 17, 17 earned runs the next day. We give up 17 the next day, there went that confidence builder we had. In college baseball, what makes it a unique sport is you've got a different guy on the mound each day and he impacts the game in such a positive or negative way based on his performance. So each team plays differently behind different pitchers. You hear coaches complain, you hear it in pro ball a lot, a guy's got a 3.00 ERA but he's 2-6 because he's not getting any run support. Sometimes that stuff happens. We had a chance and I was really disappointed in what Sebastien [Vendette] did because he was set as our #1 guy and I really thought when we faced Gonzaga that we were going to have a pitching mismatch. It turns out we didn't. Fields was their #1. Well we got our #1 going, neither one of us had a good outing, we scored six runs in 5 1/3 innings on eight hits on Fields which should have been enough on a normal day against their #1, especially with your #1 on the mound. But our guy goes 2 1/3 and gives up six hits and seven runs.
That game can still be important to us. It'll be a game that I'll continue to point to over the next week. This is what can be done if you guys go out and give us good quality starts, show up on the mound with confidence, our defense will continue to get better. There'll be games where we go out and win in the first, second and third innings like what's been happening to us because our offense is good enough against quality people to go score five, six or seven in the first three innings to have a 7-1, 7-0 lead. Once you've done that through four or five innings, 7-2 leads through five innings don't lose very often. You'll probably win 95% of the team. We're trying to convince this pitching staff of that. They might not be prepared to do that right now but if they can give us five innings with three or four runs, I think we're going to win a lot of games.
