bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week in part one of our interview we talked with Coach Ward about the split with Nevada and his overall thoughts on where his team stands.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the Nevada series?
Rocky Ward: It was a good baseball series. Nevada's got a good quality offensive club, their numbers are better than what they show. They really played a tough early schedule in some venues and they've been hot of late. They scored a whole bunch of runs down at La. Tech to open the year to get three out of four which looks bigger now that Fresno walked in there and got swept in four. Then they swung the bat really well against Hawai'i. I think they had three double figure games. I thought it was pretty good. We split the weekend and if you go on the road in those two locations [Fresno and Reno] with the history and tradition that we've fought through throughout the years, you're satisfied with what we did. But at the same time we had a chance to win six or seven of them and they were all great baseball games. They weren't quite the level of intensity that we'd faced in Fresno for four games because the crowd and what Fresno had done a year ago. Nevada was a little different. First game we tied early and then it kind of got away from us. Then we did the same thing to them in game two. And then three and four were both pretty tight. We continue to get really great performances out of D.J. Simon, it seems like every time we need it, he gets it done. The Sunday game was a lot like game one against Fresno where we came from behind and scored a bunch late but then couldn't hold it. That was just baseball stuff. I didn't think our guys played poorly. There was only one play that was impacted by some stuff. We lost [Richard] Stout on Saturday to a pulled oblique muscle which is basically a ribcage pull so he wasn't available to us on Sunday. We had a fly ball that was foul that we couldn't get to and probably would have made the play if I'd had the personnel. It's one of those things, it's a foul ball we don't get to and then they hit the ball off the end of the bat to center to score a run. Then the next guy hits a home run and you're going, "Geez, if that play gets made, we probably win." Instead he got on base and the home run became the game winner.

Overall the weekend was fine. We competed extraordinarily well, it's still a very good road team. We've done well on the road, we're 10-4, 4-4 in league on the road. In this conference, historically if you're able to split your road games and win three of four at home it'll put you in the top two or three on a pretty consistent basis. And if you can find a way to win three of four or sweep somewhere then it puts you into the conference championship race and through 12 games we're a half game out and we can't complain too much.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the split with Fresno State, some similarities between this year's club and championship caliber clubs and a little bit about the series with Nevada this weekend.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the Fresno State series. For the second straight season you split the series in Fresno and for the second straight season you were pretty close to sweeping the series.
Rocky Ward: Yeah, last year was different, last year was an upset. This year was not. This year we thought that we would go in and stand toe to toe with them and we did that. Both teams played real well, both teams respect each other a bunch, maybe even more after this series. The Fresno fans are real tough, they're tough to play in front of, they had big crowds, three or four thousand people. They're loud and they're a big homefield advantage. But also when the series was over and I was walking up through the crowd to do the radio show, people were commenting about how much better we're getting every year. They're good baseball fans, they're good baseball people. They're not quite that crowd that will clap for great plays made by the opponent but they did in the 9th inning, Reynoso made a real nice play and they clapped. That's good baseball people and they appreciate good baseball plays instead of getting into the hatred of the opponent crud that useless especially when you're dealing with young kids. That's why I respect the people that are around that program.

It was a great series. I don't know how much better you can get than 5-4 in 10 innings, a 2-0 shutout, 6-5 [in the ninth] where we had the bases loaded and had to score three to get to that point and then a tight game until we go it broken open late. We were down one in the seventh and scored two in the top of the eighth and three in the top of the ninth. It was just real good solid baseball, very few mistakes and lots of real quality defensive plays and very very good pitching. It was championship tournament type baseball which was a great experience for our kids.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the conference opening series against Sacramento State, the upcoming series with defending national champion Fresno State, being able to play from behind and relief pitchers Jake Wilson and Scott Coffman.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk about series overall. You came out with a 3-1 series victory. You played from behind in three of the games and were able to win two of them.
Rocky Ward: Yeah. It's not necessarily by plan but it's a result of our style. We know that once a starting pitcher exceeds 100 pitches, no matter how good his talent is, he becomes less effective. The sooner we can get him to 100 pitches the better. In that process it doesn't mean we go and take pitches that we can it, it means that in the first part of the game my offense is trained to be very selective. The concept is for each guy's at bat we're trying to see all the guy's pitches. If he's a fastball, change up, curve guy we'd like to see all three in my first at bat. The worst thing that can happen to you as a hitter is you're in the sixth inning, you're in your third at bat and you've got the game on the line with the bases load and you still haven't seen the guy's breaking ball. That's a huge disadvantage. As a result there are a lot of times where we may not score as efficiently early because we're being conservative. We're trying to set ourselves up for scoring late. When you look at us, if you don't score as many runs in the first one, two or three innings you're more likely to start off a game behind so we've done that. And almost without exception in all of our games this year in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings we've blown people up. We put together an inning, all of the sudden everybody's seen the guy's pitches, he's into a deeper pitch count, he's worn out and he's in a vulnerable position and we've been able to take advantage of it.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about past two weekends of play in which the Aggies compiled an 8-1 record including a 5-0 road record. We also chatted about the upcoming conference opening series against Sacramento State as well as his thoughts on the team's ranking.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the past two weeks, you picked up a series victory over San Francisco winning three out of four games and then swept your five game road trip in Texas against UT-Brownsville and UT-Pan American.
Rocky Ward: We played pretty well in the San Francisco series. We kind of established the fact in that series that we can play from the front and from the back and that's good thing to get done. The two games at Brownsville were overmatches which we kind of expected but the people down there treated us with excitement and it was a fun thing for the kids to see that part of the country. We won the first one pretty big and then the second game [Justin] Cooper gets his first starts, walks a guy, hits a guy, gives up a three run home run and all of the sudden they jump on top. We struggled a little bit, didn't drive in runs, left some people on base but eventually won it going away a little bit. It's good and it's still good to have challenges.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the comeback victory over UNM, Bryan Marquez earning National Player of the Week, the Norther Colorado series and the upcoming series against San Francisco.

bleedCrimson.net: Talk a little bit about Bryan Marquez and his week that earned him the Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week.
Rocky Ward: It's a neat deal. The neat thing about it is a lot of time on those things all they're able to go off of are the stats. Obviously his stats were good but they don't really go off of how important the hits were and obviously his were. He had a lot of opportunities to impact games in a positive way. We won four out of five and probably wouldn't have done that had it not been for him. He really had a good quality week for us.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the sweep of Hartford, the UNM game this past Tuesday, the rematch in Albuquerque, Bryan Marquez, Nate Shaver and Ben Harty.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the New Mexico game this past Tuesday. Aside from the outcome, I thought it was a good college baseball game.
Rocky Ward: Yeah, it was a good game. It was what coaches would consider in baseball as one of those regular baseball games where it could have gone either way. In this case New Mexico got a couple key base hits and we didn't. I think that the contest was competed pretty evenly. They just got the upper hand. The good part about the game was it's a big game in the state, they went on top 2-0 and we came back and Sodders hit the two run home run to tie it and get back into the game and get emotionally into the game. Really the difference in the game was in the bottom of the fourth we threatened to to score and didn't come through and in the top of the fifth they threatened to score and they did. That was really the difference is those two half innings in the game.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the sweep of Chicago State, the upcoming series against Hartford, the UNM game on Tuesday and Jeff Farnham earning WAC Player of the Week.

bleedCrimson.net: Your thoughts on the weekend?
Rocky Ward: We just got the announcement that Farnham was the Player of the Week. Overall the weekend was solid because Vendette really pitched well again. What we really wanted to see was guys to replicate their performance from the previous week because those performances were all solid. We also wanted to get a couple new starters to the mound which we were able to do. Between Vendette and Daniel Simon, they were both outstanding. Simon was fabulous and guys kinda feel like he kind of deserved Player of the Week on the pitching side. But I think the kid Sam Spangler, a New Mexico kid playing in Hawai'i, I guess if we can give it to an in-state kid then I'll forgive them. Both the starts between Garza and Amundson, they were not stellar but they were solid. Garza was solid but Casey struggled but we got to find a little bit out about Corey Hill. Having to come in in the second inning with nobody out and looked to take over a game and get it stabilized and he did. He put a zero on the board and then we scored five to get the lead back. There were some good things that happened in that transaction that we're happy with.   Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward as the Aggies take aim at a conference championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2003. This week we talked with Coach Ward about the opening weekend sweep of North Dakota, the upcoming series against Chicago State, the new WAC schedule as well as his thoughts on the WAC's performance on opening weekend.

bleedCrimson.net: You put on a pretty big offensive display in the opening weekend but maybe more importantly you had a good defensive showing.
Rocky Ward: Yeah, we're pleased with the quality of defense and pitching. We didn't know what to expect from North Dakota. They're coming out of cold weather, a new Division I program, making the transition. I was really pleased with their quality, I thought they had a good quality ball club. I understand people will look at the scores and say, "they pretty much took it to them." They made a couple mistakes in the first and third games that expanded the scores, those could have been much closer than they were. We really took it to them pretty well in game one of the doubleheader but overall all three starting performances were outstanding. I don't know that I can remember in school history that we had three consecutive six plus inning starts out of guys. You'd have to go back a ways. And we got good relief and played solid defense, only four errors on the weekend. A couple of those were kind of silly ones. Two of the four were first hitter of the game, just kind of routine plays to the first basemen and they weren't quite ready.

Middle infield and outfield play was really good. And really it wasn't a great offensive weekend outside of what Leo Aguirre did. Some guys had a good weekend, don't get me wrong, a few guys that we expect to be great offensive performers had below average weekends, to bad weekends. And to go and be able to average 14 [runs] with that said, what are we going to be like when we get it all together.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward. The Aggie baseball season begins February 20th and we've checked in with Coach Ward to get an update on the team as they ready for the 2009 season. The Aggies completed a successful fall practice season and we have Coach Ward's thoughts on his infielders, outfielders and pitching staff. Up next are the outfielders.

LF: We've moved [Leo] Aguirre from a 1B/DH role to left field. Leo's not a real good runner, but he's really really worked hard this fall. He's cut his 60-yard dash speed by about 4/10ths of a seconds which is practically unheard of. He's really worked hard, he played there a couple innings last year just to get him in the lineup because late in the year he was just hot. Almost a must have in the lineup guy. We project him going into the year to be the starting left fielder. He's not going to go take balls off the wall but he'll catch stuff that he gets to, he throws the ball accurately, breaks well. When you go back and look at his fall statistics he hit .468 with 11 doubles and six home runs, 32 RBIs in 94 at bats.

This is the best offensive fall team we've ever put together. Will it become the best offensive spring team in the school's history? It very well might.  Continue Reading This Post >>

bleedCrimson.net has been conducting weekly in season interviews with Aggie head baseball coach Rocky Ward. The Aggie baseball season begins February 20th and we've checked in with Coach Ward to get an update on the team as they ready for the 2009 season. The Aggies completed a successful fall practice season and we have Coach Ward's thoughts on his infielders, outfielders and pitching staff. Up first are the infielders.

bleedCrimson.net: Let's talk about your infield players and who you're looking at for the upcoming season.
Rocky Ward: At first base Chris Auten's back. He's the heir apparent there but a kid named Ben Hardy came in this fall and just absolutely lit it up. If you look at his fall statistics, of course fall stats you've always got to take with a little bit of a grain of salt because they're against yourselves. Ben hit .460 in the fall with 15 home runs, nine doubles and 53 RBIs. That's about as big a fall as I've had out of anybody. It's a bigger fall than what Billy Becher did or Ryan Kinning, Mark Aranda, any of those guys. The last guy, and we don't really keep stats for this but Adam Harvey as a junior hit 14 home runs one fall and that was just miraculous. He was the first guy to ever go into double figures in home runs [in the fall] and he turns around and hits eight that year or something. Those are the two guys at first base.

On the depth chart, [Leo] Aguirre who's been there as a backup is still kind of there but we've moved him to the outfield. Jared Jordan is a catcher who's really good around the bag at first and we'll play him there as a defensive guy. Hardy and Auten are going to continue to compete through the early part of the spring but one of them is going to DH and one of them is going to play first base. We've actually looked at Chris Auten at third some, he was actually a third baseman before he injured his arm and he's okay. His arm is really short, he's never really recovered from the injury he had but he's accurate.  Continue Reading This Post >>