By When Long Beach State faced conference rival Cal State Fullerton last month, Shane Peterson was slated to start as the Dirtbags’ designated hitter.
The DH position, usually reserved for a power hitter rarely played by someone batting below .100. Everyone must have thought Dirtbags head coach Mike Weathers was crazy for using Peterson, who was 3-for-38 on the season, as the DH in one of the biggest games of the year, especially when facing National Player of the Year candidate starting pitcher Wes Roemer.
Peterson himself had no idea how his average had gotten so low. After batting .328 as a freshman in 2006, and being named second-team all-conference, this slow start was not something Peterson was used to.
But as the series wore on, Peterson finally saw his slow start speed up. He managed to slug his way out of his slump with a solo homerun, two doubles and two RBIs.
“That game it just all fell into place for me,” Peterson said. “I started to get hits finally. That felt really good.”
Over the past month, his average has raised to .287. Last week, Peterson drove in four runs against Pepperdine and four against CS Northridge. Peterson proved that his bat is back, along with something else – his confidence, which had gone down as far as his average.
“It was tough. I had confidence issues and I was really struggling,” Peterson said. “I started off this season right where I wanted to be and then I found myself out of the lineup.”
After concentrating mostly on pitching in the Alaska Summer League, Peterson came back hitting well in the fall. Projected as one of the Dirtbags’ top hitters this season, Peterson fell far below the marks that he – and everyone else – had set for himself.
Baffled as to why he suddenly couldn’t hit, Peterson thinks he may have put too much pressure on himself.
“We don’t have the Evan Longoria’s or players like that, so I felt like I had to step up and fill in that role,” Peterson said. “I think maybe I pressed a little too hard, especially when I wasn’t doing too well.”
Weathers said Peterson took his struggles to heart. As a mental player, Peterson internalized the trouble with his bat, and let it affect his play.
“He doesn’t show a lot of emotion,” Weathers said. “But it was eating him up, no question it was eating him up,”
Pitching became Peterson’s outlet for his frustration. With starter Manny McElroy out for much of the beginning of the season, and with several Tuesday games on the schedule, a starting pitcher was needed. Despite being unable to produce offensively for the Dirtbags, Peterson was able to make up for it on the mound.
“I don’t know if [slumping] helped me, but I would get on the mound and be upset from hitting,” Peterson said. “I would go out there and say, ‘Just forget about hitting and do something right.'”
Confidence on the mound came easier to Peterson. Although he was shaky on the mound at first, pitching coach Troy Buckley helped him block out other distractions and concentrate on throwing.
“At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t really trusting myself, not really believing that my stuff was good enough to get the hitters out,” Peterson said. “Now I go out there and let them hit the ball and let my defense take care of it. It’s a lot easier that way.”
His work on mound paid off. In eight appearances and seven starts, Peterson has compiled a 3.25 ERA, and produced a 2-1 record with a .248 opponent average. Last Friday night against CSUN, Peterson notched a career-high six strikeouts, and gave up two unearned runs in five innings pitched – his best outing of the season.
“He works very hard, and he has to because he’s a two-way player,” Weathers said. “He has to practice full-time at pitching, and he has to be a position player. But he does a good job of trying to separate them.”
Peterson has not only doubled as a pitcher and designated hitter, but he also has made seven starts at first base, teaming with Brandon Godfrey. Last season, Peterson’s bat landed him a spot in left field. For only a sophomore, Peterson has seen a lot of action in a variety of positions.
“We got him out of high school thinking he would do both [pitch and hit], almost more pitching than hitting,” Weathers said. “But last year when he turned into such a good hitter and was a freshman DH, all-league guy, we knew we had something special.”
Constant encouragement from Weathers reminded Peterson that he would be able to turn his slump around. Advice from senior Allen Woods and his roommate, Kip Masuda, also kept his morale up.
“[Weathers] brought me into his office a couple times to see how I was,” Peterson said. “It really helped to know that he hadn’t lost confidence in me. He knew that I would turn it around.”
Since the Fullerton series, everything is back to normal with Peterson. He’s batting in the third spot again, driving in runs, throwing career-high numbers on the mound and is even about to earn an Academic All-American award. The self-proclaimed “perfectionist” has no doubts in his mind that in the remainder of this season and the next, his numbers will continue to rise.
“I think this actually helped me, because now in the future when something like this happens, I’ll have something to look back on,” Peterson said. “I’ll be able to say, ‘This is all going to turn around and you’re really better than you think you are. You’re better than you’re playing.'”
