Four teams from California are nationally ranked as the college baseball season gets under way this weekend.
Stanford, which is bidding for a fourth consecutive trip to the College World Series, is Baseball America’s No. 15 team and is also slotted 23rd in the USA Today coaches’ poll.
UC Santa Barbara, meanwhile, will open the season ranked 18th and UCLA 24th by USA Today’s panel of coaches, and UC Irvine is 25th, according to Baseball America.
Teams begin play Feb. 16, with Stanford hosting Cal State Fullerton in the schools’ annual season-opening series. UC Santa Barbara will travel to Buies Creek, North Carolina, to face Campbell, while UCLA and UC Irvine will be home against Gonzaga and North Dakota State, respectively.
The season will culminate with the 64-team NCAA Tournament and the College World Series, set for June 14 to 24 in Omaha, Nebraska.
In their preseason poll, Pacific 12 Conference coaches picked two-time defending champion Stanford to finish second this year, behind Oregon State, with UCLA third. The coaches tabbed USC to finish fifth, and Cal eighth.
Seventh-year Stanford Coach David Esquer has something of a rebuilding job on his hands after the Cardinal lost eight players, including Pac-12 player of the year Alberto Rios, conference pitcher of the year Quinn Mathews, and leading hitter Tommy Troy to the Major League Baseball draft. In addition, two-way star Braden Montgomery transferred to Texas A&M, and pitcher Brandt Pancer left for Georgia.
Coming off a 44–20 campaign that included a 23–7 Pac-12 mark, Stanford still boasts plenty of talent, with more to come. The school announced Feb. 13 that Japanese phenom Rintaro Sasaki, a 6-foot, 250-pound first baseman who boasts a national-record 140 high school home runs, has signed a national letter of intent with the Cardinal.
While having to wait until next season for Sasaki, who attends the same Japanese high school that produced two-way major-league star Shohei Ohtani, Stanford will be led by catcher Malcolm Moore. The Pac-12 freshman of the year last season, Moore hit .311 and finished third on the team with 63 RBIs.
Moore is among 55 players who are on the watch list for the Golden Spikes Award, which is presented annually to the nation’s top collegian.
Senior infielder Owen Cobb returns after hitting .324 last season, and junior shortstop Trevor Haskins appears fully healthy after a year in which he battled multiple injuries. The Cardinal also figures to receive a boost from 6-6, 240-pound sophomore first baseman Brandon Larson, a transfer who led UC San Diego with nine home runs and 45 RBIs last season.
Pitching, of course, will be key, with Stanford counting heavily on sophomore right-hander Matt Scott, as well as highly touted freshmen Joey Volchko, Christian Lim, and Aidan Keenan.
UCLA is seeking significant improvement after having gone 28–24–1 overall and 12–16–1 in the Pac-12. Bruins Coach John Savage got off to a good start when Baseball America last fall ranked the school’s incoming recruiting class tops in the country.
Infielder Roch Cholowsky of Chandler, Arizona, headlines the group that also has a heavy Southern California presence. Infielder Cameron Kim and outfielder Grant Gray are from Norco High School. Pitcher Justin Lee and outfielder Dean West are from Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks, and infielder Phoenix Call is from Calabasas.
The Bruins will count heavily on three juniors who are pre-season all-Pac-12 selections—infielders Duce Gourson and Cody Schrier, and pitcher Luke Jewett.
Gourson, a Baseball America preseason All-American, led UCLA in nearly every offensive category last season. A product of San Diego’s Point Loma High, he hit .319 with 10 home runs and 48 RBIs in 53 games.
Schrier was a consensus freshman All-American in 2022 before injuries limited him to 32 games last season, while Jewett will enter this year as the team’s No. 1 starter after having excelled in the bullpen the past two seasons. Both are from JSerra High in San Juan Capistrano.
UC Santa Barbara received nine of 11 votes in the Big West Conference preseason coaches’ poll, with UC Irvine projected to finish second and defending champion UC San Diego third. The coaches voted Hawaii to place fourth, followed by Cal State Northridge, Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Long Beach State, UC Davis, Cal State Bakersfield, and UC Riverside.
UC Santa Barbara won Big West championships in 2019 and 2022, but finished fifth last season, going 18–12 in league play and 35–20 overall. Gauchos pitchers Matt Ager, a junior right-hander, and sophomore lefty Hudson Barrett earned spots on the pre-season all-conference team, as did junior third baseman Zander Darby.
Ager, from Foothill High in Pleasanton, is also on the Golden Spikes Award watch list, as are two juniors from Cal—catcher Caleb Lomavita and former El Cerrito High outfielder Rodney Green Jr.
UC Santa Barbara also features junior outfielder Ivan Brethowr, a returning first-team all-conference selection, sophomore right-handed pitcher Tyler Bremner, who was honorable mention all-Big West last year, and sophomore righty Ryan Gallagher, the 2022 conference freshman of the year who missed last season due to injury.
UC Irvine just missed making last season’s NCAA Tournament after finishing 38–17, including fourth in the Big West at 19–11. The Anteaters return their entire starting lineup and also had three preseason all-conference selections—senior outfielder Caden Kendle, junior third baseman Dub Gleed, and sophomore first baseman Anthony Martinez.
Kendle opted to return for another season at UC Irvine despite having been a 10th-round draft pick by the St. Louis Cardinals. The Big West co-field player of the year, he hit .355, topped the conference with 69 runs scored, and ranked second with 77 hits and 56 RBIs.
The Big West freshman field player of the year and a Baseball America freshman All-American last season, Martinez led the conference in several offensive categories, including a .394 batting average, 60 runs batted in and 91 hits.
Senior second baseman Jo Oyama, a second-team all-conference pick last year, also figures to play a key role for the Anteaters. The pitching staff is the team’s biggest question mark, but graduate student Nick Pinto offers stability at the top of the starting rotation.
