Pac-12 Pitcher Of The Week – Take That Ben Wetzler!

Ben Wetzler broke the law.  Ben Wetzler violated team rules.  Ben Wetzler risked submarining a potential championship run at the expense of the teammates who’ve depended on the Oregon State ace for most of the 2014 college baseball season.  And now he’s got a trophy to prove it.

If sports have taught us anything, it’s that winning trumps all.  Oregon State Head Baseball Coach Pat Casey has earned his stripes as a big-time coach at the collegiate level.  His back-to-back national championships in 2006 and 2007 will forever be seen as one of the more impressive accomplishments in recent college baseball memory.  Winning one at a rainy, cold weather school lacking any real history in the sport would’ve been enough, but to back it up with a second in subsequent years won’t and can’t be diminished by anyone with any knowledge of a game rich in tradition.  But his inability to do more than send Mr. Wetzler to bed without supper for actions worthy of at least a bit more will forever scar the coach who’ve many looked at as a beacon of college coaching integrity.

I understand that what Wetzler did – essentially get drunk, act a buffoon, and break a couple relatively minor laws in the process – isn’t chain-gang material, but it is worthy of a punishment with real consequences opposed to the paper ones spoon-fed us by the coach protecting his Pac-12 Championship.  By suspending the star pitcher for 5 games retroactive to the Sunday following the incident, he simply delayed his only action in the pivotal series versus 2^nd place Washington last weekend, from the opener Friday night to the series-deciding contest Sunday afternoon.  So rather than feel the sting of watching from the sidelines while the teammates he let down fought for the conference title, Wetzler was “forced” to take the mound in the rubber match of a game likely to decide the conference crown.

Oh the humanity!

While explaining his decision late last week, Casey stated he chose to define Wetzler by the 1,300 days he’d spent at OSU, rather than 1 regretful night.  Saying that he believed Ben to be “… a fine young man, and that this would only motivate him to become a better person.”  I’ll take Coach Casey at his word on that, but assigning punishment truly devoid of any real consequences goes beyond Wetzler and this specific incident, and stains a program and the coach responsible for doing it the “right way.”  Rather than sitting Wetzler for the entirety of the season’s most important series to date and sending a message with the bigger picture in mind, Casey chose to put winning before the accountability habitually taught in team sport.

To make things worse, Monday, Wetzler was voted by the Pac-12 Conference as the conference pitcher of the week, on the heels of the 2-hit shutout he threw against the Huskies a day prior.  Now, not only has his coach whiffed on an effort to make a point, the conference accentuated it by rewarding him for a performance in a game he likely shouldn’t have been playing in!

Ugh.

I like Pat Casey and think he’s a heck of a coach, but he missed on this one and I think in retrospect he’ll realize that down the road.  His job is to win games, but not lost in the responsibilities of a college coach is the obligation to teach young men.  I know, it sounds a bit hokey to suggest such in an era of big money athletics, but the good coaches still believe it and the great ones are ultimately judged by it.  Pat Casey is a good coach, the bulk of his tenure suggests no other, but if he’s truly great and is to be remembered as such in the future, we’ll have to heed his own words … judge him by his career as a whole, and not this one day.