By snoadmin
When you think of January sports, baseball isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But for college baseball January is a team’s spring training.
The top college baseball programs in Southern California came to The Walter Pyramid last Wednesday to talk to the media about the progress of their teams going into the season, which begins at the start of February.
For the Dirtbags, Mike Weathers talked about a squad that finished 29-27 last season, and lost its best player, Evan Longoria, who was drafted third overall in last May’s Major League Baseball Draft.
“On paper, we don’t have a lot of experience, but we are hoping that might turn out to be an advantage for us,” Weathers said. “We are playing a very difficult schedule and I don’t think the team even understands how hard it is, so they shouldn’t be intimidated with who we are up against.”
Where LBSU is very inexperienced is at the mound.
The Dirtbags lost their top two starting pitchers last year and Vance Worley is the only pitcher returning who pitched more than 30 innings last year for LBSU.
Even though there may be a lot of question marks coming in to the season, LBSU is ranked No. 30 by Collegiate Baseball.
One reason for the rankings is because of its sophomore shortstop, Danny Espinosa.
Espinosa, who hit .281 as a freshman last year, is looking to continue a recent trend of LBSU shortstops who have been drafted in the first round of the MLB draft. Bobby Crosby was the No. 25 pick in 2001 and Troy Tulowitzki was the No. 7 pick in 2005.
“The team goal is to get to Omaha,” Espinosa said. “The team chemistry is really tight this year and I think it will make us better.”
The two-hour media day featured coaches and players from 13 schools: Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, USC, San Diego State, Loyola Marymount, University of San Diego, Pepperdine and LBSU.
