What’s up Cougar Nation? With nothing too exciting going on in the Palouse in early April, I’d like to shift the focus of today’s post in another direction. I realize that our name here is wsufootballblog, but baseball has always been a huge passion of mine. And since SeanHawk has encouraged everyone to explore a variety of topics, today I’m going to take a look at what Northwest baseball fans are in store for in what promises to be a very interesting summer. Click on the jump to read more.
After years of mediocrity, the WSU baseball team captured the imagination of Cougar fans the past two seasons with impressive runs to the postseason. A sort of cult-like following to Donnie Marbut’s rag-tag crew emerged as the team staged impressive comebacks against perenniel collegiate powerhouses like USC, UCLA and Oregon State. They pushed Arkansas to the brink of elimination last year in the NCAA Regionals Finals.
With much fanfare heading into the season, I decided it would be wise to apply for the job covering the team for the Daily Evergreen. After a year writing a weekly column, lo and behold, I got the job. So for those of you who have followed the squad to this point, you’ll know their efforts to remain relevant in the Pac-10 appear to be waning.
After a remarkable eight run eighth inning in Friday night’s 10-8 come from behind win over against Stanford on Friday night, the Cougars appeared to be back on track. They then proceeded to lose 22-3 on Saturday before dropping a 4-3 decision today at Bailey-Brayton Field. The loss drops the team to 11-12 overall and 1-5 in conference play.
The starting pitching has struggled to hold good hitting teams in check and the offense hasn’t consistently produced so far. It appears the squad misses Matt Fanelli and Michael Weber this year more than I initially thought they would. However, they still have enough talent to compete with anyone in the conference. Losing games by 19 runs, however, simply is atrocious. Those kind of embarrassing losses make me wary of predicting a late season surge to the postseason. At this point, getting back to .500 conference play looks like it will be very difficult.
To have a chance to return to relevancy, they will need to sweep or at least win next weekend’s series against UCLA. Many consider Donnie Marbut to be among the top coaches in the country. It will be interesting to see if he can rally this team to compete harder more consistently.
Moving on…. I was mildly impressed with the start to the 2011 Mariners season. After beating Oakland on Friday and Saturday, I wasn’t surprised to see the team lay an egg in today’s series finale. Doug Fister pitched moderately well but the offense didn’t produce for the first time this season. This team won’t lose 100 games again, but days like today will occur more often than the casual fan would like to see. So yes, it was nice to score five and six runs in the two opening games, but expecting Oakland to continue to field the baseball like they were a low-level Double AA team was unrealistic.
Certainly this team has a chance to be respectable. Jason Vargas is underrated, Erik Bedard is an elite pitcher when healthy and Felix Hernandez is perhaps the best right-hander in the league. Michael Pineda, an emerging young fireballer, can immediately win at the major league level. Simply put, this pitching staff is capable of being very good.
I’m also excited about how good Justin Smoak looked in the first three games. He laced a pair doubles and had very good patience at the plate. If Bradley can even produce at the level of a mediocre three hitter, the combination of him, Smoak and Cust could actually be formidable. And with Ichiro and Figgins setting the table, I wouldn’t be surprised if our offense lands statistically in the middle of the American League.
Maybe I’m reading too much into the first three games of the year, but I get the sense this team won’t be as offensively anemic as they were in 2010. Barring any serious injuries to major contributors, I actually think the Mariners can win anywhere between 78 and 85 games.
That’s all I have for you today. Feel free to follow me and fellow D-E beat reporter Brett Gleason online as we cover the Cougar baseball team for the rest of the 2011 season.
Go Cougs!
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