bleedCrimson.net: A good weekend for you ballclub picking up the second four-game sweep of the season and you got some kids moving that you had wanted to get going including Wes Starkes who was the WAC Hitter of the Week.
Rocky Ward: Yeah. I wanted him to get going and he must've listened because he was named the Hitter of the Week. That's not exactly what I was expecting but that worked out pretty nice.

Binghamton went to the mound on Friday with the American East pitcher of the year last year and I knew they were pretty decent in their number one and number two guys and they had a couple pretty good arms down in the pen. I expected them to be a pretty good challenge. We were able to get to their number one and as is typical of the first game of a four game series, when the game gets a little out of hand you can't waste any pitching and so they had to go down staff and we were able to put up a 10 spot late in the game that made it look really ugly. It was a pretty good game up until that point. Reid was fabulous again and it was good because he only had to go five innings and we didn't have to extend him and it's always good to give your ace a little bit of an easy day, particularly when he'd thrown a complete game the game before. That worked out nicely.

Overall on the weekend we really swung the bats extraordinarily well. We went with a different defensive set than what we've had with Forney at shortstop and Aguayo moved over to third. We reduced errors over the previous weekend. Neither kid had great defensive weekends but Ryan is pretty comfortable at first base which was a pleasant surprise and Ty played a little bit tight throughout the weekend. He made a couple of errors that he wouldn't normally make. That defensive set really gives us a whole bunch of range in our infield. Hipp already has outstanding range for a second baseman. Forney has plus range as a shortstop and as we said, sometimes the errors are not as predictive of how poorly you played, sometimes it means these guys get to more balls than the others do. Sometimes a clean basehit, a couple balls may turn into errors because they were able to get to it. I like the setup the way it is and we'll continue to work with that. It's made us better at first even though Ryan had a play with Mack on the mound in game two where Tyler threw the ball a little low to him and he didn't handle it. But he's still trying to work his way around the bag with feet position and footwork is kind of really an understated thing for first baseman.

Most people think the first baseman just stands over there and catches the ball. Well yeah, half the plays are that way but the rest of them require quality footwork and positioning in order to handle the different types of throws and he's working his way through that.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on Dan Reid picking up WAC Pitcher of the Week honors?
Rocky Ward: You know me, I've always thought my pitchers haven't gotten quite enough credit. That being the fact that our style of play is more offensive and our individual ERAs and team ERAs are a little higher than normal just because we don't play the infield in very much. We play different defensive sets to avoid the big inning. We'll give up a run or two, we'll play a soft defense. If you want to put it in football terms, it's a prevent defense all the time. We don't to give up the bomb, we'll give up the short runs.

The end result is it hurts my pitchers' numbers sometimes. Dan was really good. When you look at the numbers, a complete game and a real complete game that we didn't have to have him throw 150 pitches. He threw about 115 or 120. You feel like you didn't use him up too much. He was pretty fresh because he had missed his start against Oregon State from the rainout and so he hadn't pitched in about nine or 10 days.

He's turned himself into a pretty legitimate number one pitcher in this league. He's second in the league in ERA. He goes out and he's throwing strikes, he's developed a better breaking ball than he had a year ago. It's sharper. To a certain extent I think out of all the guys that have benefitted from the new bat, he's benefitted from hit. His problem a year ago was that he threw too many strikes. If you miss by a little bit with those old bats, a guy can get a little bit of the barrel on it and hit it out of the yard. That doesn't work with the new bats anymore. His command of three pitches and his ability to throw all three in any count has really helped. His straight change has gotten better to the point where he used it a lot in this game. He put a lot of balls in play. It was a complete game with three walks and two strikeouts. He didn't strike out a whole bunch of people but he's learning, like most young pitchers when they mature, that it takes less effort to get a hitter to hit a ball into play and get an out, it takes much more effort to strike a guy out.

He's starting to learn how to do that. He pitches to the bat. He gets the ball around the zone and keeps making quality pitches and he just keeps getting better. I'm really pleased with it. We haven't had very many Pitchers of the Week.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the weekend?
Rocky Ward: When you have a tournament like we did when you have three teams, you worry about them because you have a tendency to end up with pitching mismatches. What basically happened is VMI went against us with their number one and number two and they were pretty good to really good. We played in rainy, wet conditions. It was high humidity. The conditions actually weren't that terrible the first game of the doubleheader.

We faced two number ones on Friday and did a pretty good job against the kid from VMI and him on the ropes. It was one of those baseball games that we lost just because it's baseball. It seems like everything they put into play found a hole and everything we hit was "at 'em". I thought the kids battled the kid pretty well and we got him out of the game, we just couldn't get the breakthrough hit. The top of the eighth we had the bases loaded with two outs and had a chance to get on top and Starkes lines out to the shortstop to end the inning. It was a 3-2 game at that point and then they went on in the bottom of the eighth and strung together a couple hits and ended up scoring four to kind of put it out of reach and make it a 7-2 final.

Trey Ross pitched well. We made a defensive mistake. We gave unearned runs in tight games in most every single game. That kind of got them going. We didn't handle a couple bunt plays and threw a couple balls away and made some defensive errors. We battled back but we just didn't get hard hit balls to fall for us.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: A good win over New Mexico on Tuesday night gives you the season sweep for the first time since 1995. You got a good outing from Dan Reid in the win.
Rocky Ward: Yeah he just had great command. He was all over the strike zone and they're a pretty aggressive team anyway. He was on a pitch count. I don't know what the final count was but somewhere around 80 and he was coming off of somewhat short rest. He had three days rest, it's not that tough to do but we initially had intended for him to throw Friday against Oregon State but both games against Oregon State are on Friday and Sunday and they're both at night. When we started talking about it, it really didn't matter if he started the Friday night or the Sunday night so we just rolled him back to Sunday. Last weekend we had really good performances out of Dan and Trey Ross but really below average performances out of Mack and Beck and as a result of that we used a lot of arms. We kind of looked at this game as a "piece it together" game. A couple innings a piece out of guys. I knew Dan was rested and I wanted the mature guy that I thought could get us into the game. I really didn't expect him to go six but I wanted three or four and we'd piece it together. He did a little better than that because of the short pitch innings.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Parker Hipp was named the WAC Hitter of the Week after his play this past weekend down in Beaumont which included a grand slam against San Francisco and now has four home runs through the first three weekends
Rocky Ward: Yeah, leading the team. I didn't know he would do that. Last year to hit a home run he had to really get into. He got the bat cleared in Sacramento and got a home run out of it, it was a big blow in that series. But he just couldn't quite replicate it. He's starting to get comfortable with pitch selection. He still hits the ball the other way a lot as he did last year. You kind of develop the basis of what you have to do. As a left-handed hitter you have to be able to hit the ball the other way, you have to be able to when you can because every time a right-handed pitcher leaves a breaking ball out over the plate you have a chance to double with it on the pull side. He's kind of at the point now where he's got enough power to hit the breaking ball out. One of the four home runs he's hit was on the breaking ball. He'd gotten called out on strikes twice before that before he looked for it and hit it out. The other three have been fastballs that he's looked for and located and gotten the barrel through. He's become more hitter-ish. He was a good defender last year, a plus type defender. He's just starting to look like a hitter. He's always thought the game pretty well he just hasn't always been able to execute it physically. He's a full package now. He was a key to the weekend because we didn't swing the bats very well at all. Karraker and Aguayo who we'd been riding the first two weeks both had two or three hits between them, they really had bad weekends. Parker figured big-time into both of the wins.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Ryan Aguayo was named the WAC Hitter of the Week for his outstanding weekend last week against Buffalo.
Rocky Ward: He had one of those unbelievable weeks where almost every ball he hit was hit hard and if it wasn't hit hard it landed for a hit anyway. He went 4-for-4 with two home runs in the first game on Saturday and it was just perfect hitting. He used the conditions. He went out and looked for a fastball out over the plate, hit it to right field. I don't know if it would have left or not without the wind but it doesn't make any difference. It's about the hitter being smart enough to understand his conditions.

He just did a really nice job on the whole weekend. He's had a great start to the season period. Before the second game of the doubleheader I was giving him a hard time, I said, "Hey Ryan, you're hitting .600. Are you gonna keep that up?" and he just looked at me right dead in the eye and said, "Yeah, no problem" and he goes out and goes 4-for-4 with two home runs. Is he gonna .600? No he's not. But I don't know what he's gonna do. The kid has really great approach and he's one of the smartest baseball players I've ever been around. He doesn't grade as our best hitter when you look at his bat speed and his strength and all that stuff but there are days when he clearly is our best hitter.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the opening four games, you start out 4-0 with three wins over Houston Baptist and a win over New Mexico.
Rocky Ward: It's a nice start. We haven't played great baseball but we've been good enough with all the returning guys playing outstandingly. Aguayo, Starkes, Hipp have been All-Stars and Fisher is coming on a little bit. Voight and Karraker have solidified themselves. We're still having a little trouble getting performance out of left field and DH but that'll come. It's just very unusual for us.

I'm just really really pleased with how good of leaders our returning guys have been. We've gotten solid pitching performances out of our returning guys. We're still struggling a little bit in the pen but not terrible. Reid, Mack, Beck and Ross all four had good solid outings. It's still difficult in college baseball getting games closed out. The Houston Baptist game on Saturday, we gave up a bunch of runs late and really didn't play well but still won. Young kids are getting outs for the first time.

Last night was a little bit different. Voight 's made three errors so far which has been really a surprise to everybody because he's been as surehanded as anybody on the club so that's good. When he's making mistakes and we're winnings we're okay. Last night we had the game in hand at 12-2 after we put up the big number and then gave them some momentum because Zach didn't make a play. They're a Division I team, they're really new. They've got a bunch of new guys. They're not necessarily young but they lost a lot of key people and so they're searching for their identity a little bit. They'll still end up being a pretty good club I think.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Was this freshman class with Parker Hipp, Zach Fisher, Tyler Mack and Ryan Beck the best performing freshmen classes as a group that you've had?
Rocky Ward: Yeah. Clearly. We've had a couple years where we've had a freshman or two who've really played great. Hipp and Fisher were gonna play a lot of baseball but they got moved into an every day role in a lot of cases because of the injuries to Harty and Sodders and Beck and Mack moved themselves into weekend starting roles in league and really handled it well. It's probably the best group of freshman performances we've ever had. I don't know what'll happen but I think Parker Hipp and Zack Fisher are deserving of Freshman All-American honors. I would think that Ryan Beck would but his earned run average won't be good enough. He had three or four innings where he gave up big runs. Earned run average is exactly that, it's an average. There were just a couple times where he bobbled. Eighty percent of the time he was on the mound he was outstanding, the other twenty percent he was bad and it kind of hurt his overall average. But that's part of making the transition from high school baseball to Division I, top 100 baseball which is where we play. It's a pretty high level of baseball.

bc.net: Tyler Mack finished with six wins and the freshman record at New Mexico State is 10 wins. How impressive is the season that he had?
RW: Yeah, wins by a freshman is 10 by Gary Goldsmith. He's all over the record book. He played in 1990 and when you look at our stat book, games started in a season, 19, career 64, Gary Goldsmith. Innings pitched in a season, career innings pitched, he's the career strikeout leader. For Tyler Mack to win six is a big deal. Ten for a freshman is quite a year, 10 for anybody. I just went through the All-American list and I believe there are only eight guys on the All-American list in our region that had double-digits in wins. It's hard to do. It's hard to win double-digits in college. You only get 14 to 16 starts and so you've got to be pretty good. Ryan Beck tied the record for most appearances by a freshman with 26 and that happened to be held by Scott Coffman last year so we have back-to-back freshmen make a lot of appearances for us.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the season overall? A number that will get overlooked at least immediately because of the way the season ended was the fact that the 2010 team won 36 games which is the 5th most in program history.
Rocky Ward: Yeah. The one thing that was so unique about this season was it was really broken down into three parts. The first 21 games we were 10-11, below .500. We were struggling finding an identity. We gave up 30 runs twice in that stretch. That's hard to do. For a team as good as we were to give up 30 runs twice. We did it once against Georgia State who ended up leading the nation in runs scored per game. For all intents and purposes one of the best offenses in the country. But the other one was St. Joseph's who had a pretty good offense but I don't think they ended up in the top 20 [runs scored] I believe. Just the essence of that part of the season was we win a game 33-1, which was the biggest winning margin of the season against St. Joseph's but then turn around and lose a game 35-16, to the same team. That was the essence of where we were in that first part of the season. We're going, "Are we gonna be good or are we not?" We were really good or really bad and then all of the sudden, a couple things happened. We made some changes coaching-wise to try to shore up our defense, go to Santa Barbara and lose a game against a very good pitcher, one of the better pitchers in the Big West, then go on to win 12 in a row.

At one point we won 24 of 27 and one of them was the tie. So in the middle of the season we were the hottest team in the country and that's where our ranking came in and that's where we established ourself at the top of the league. We led the league a couple different times through the season. Then you lose 12-of-13 to finish. So the 12 game winning streak you kind of gave back with the stuff at the end.

In analysis of it all, the amazing part of the 24 of 27 was the fact that we lost Ben Harty after the Santa Barbara series. He was our four-hole hitter and at the time was hitting over .400 with 12 home runs and our number one catcher. To go through that stretch and then a couple weeks later we lose Mike Sodders who had 15 home runs and was hitting .370 or .380 and to have been able to handle losing your top two offensive players and to be able to put that stretch together is what made us feel like as coaches, players and fans that this was a pretty special team. To be able to overcome those types of losses. It was a pretty special team. This was a group of really good hard-working kids. The years that Wesley Starkes, Chace Perkins, Ryan Aguayo, Parker Hipp and Nate Shaver, those guys in particular, had. They were the heart and soul of the team. They took it upon themselves to kind of replace Sodders' and Harty's numbers. That's basically what they did. I leave Leo [Aguirre] out of that because he one of the top three hitters and he was the only one left. He basically continued to do what he did. What the other guys bring up their games, it's hard to say they were playing over their heads, but they really played up when the pressure was on. That's what put us through that run.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on Hohokam Field after seeing it for a couple games yesterday.
Rocky Ward: This is the place that's got the big green batter's eye, I don't know what the height is but it's probably 100 foot wall in dead center, it's almost impossible to hit it out to dead center. But it's also 420 there too. It's 340 down the left field line and 350 down the right field line. Those are reasonable sizes, similar to what ours is. But it goes straight across and then cuts right out at the gaps and kind of turns the corner. There's a little about a 20 foot jet back to 390 and then 390 up to 420 in center. Anything that's pulled from straightaway left field and straightaway right field to the line the ball really carries well. We had six or eight home runs in batting practice that were hit over the 390 markers. That was one part I wasn't sure how well the ball would carry. It's one of those deals where if you hit it 10 feet to the right it might be a fly out and 10 feet to the left it's a home run by 20 feet. It's a pretty unique ballpark, it seems to be pretty fair.

The field is in good shape, it's playing very very fast but there are no lips on it. It's what you'd expect from a Major League field. The grounds crew does a real good job but it's still a desert infield. In watching both games yesterday there were probably four or five basehits on balls hit off the front part of the plate, the hardpan in front, that jumped up in the air. Most of them didn't go out of the infield but if the runner was a decent runner, he got a basehit out of it. There was a key basehit in the SJSU game where a ball bounced over Kort's head at first that was the fourth run after they'd scored three in the fifth that kind of got things going.  Continue Reading This Post >>