It’s amazing how fast this season has gone.  It seems just like yesterday that we were playing Air Force to open the season.  I guess the old saying is still true today, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”  We finished the 2010 season at Cal Poly over the weekend.  We lost the first game, won the second game, and then lost badly in our season finale.  We ended up doubling our win total from last season as we finished with a 26-30 record.  Our record could have been well over .500 but we lost quite a few games that we should have won.  Overall, we exceeded everyone’s expectations.

2010 was a breakout year for our baseball team.  With one year of Division I baseball under our belts, we played like seasoned veterans.  Like I stated earlier, we doubled our win total from 2009.  We won 26 games with the 27th toughest schedule in the nation…not too bad for a second year program.  However, for those of us returning to Bakersfield next year, we know that we have another whole level to climb in order to be playing in the postseason.

2010 was a year for the CSUB record books as our guys broke just about every school record.  Brandon Boren led the team with an incredible 98 hits.  He finished with the highest hits per at-bat ratio that Coach Kernen has ever coached.  He broke the record on the final day of the season and his final day in a Roadrunner uniform.  Jeremy Rodriguez put the finishing  touches on an awesome season by finishing 2010 with an even .400 batting average.  He’s the first Roadrunner to ever accomplish that feat.  There were a plethora of other individual records that were broken in 2010.  The 2010 Roadrunner squad made several unforgettable memories throughout the year.  For instance, we started out the year by sweeping Air Force in a four game series.  We played every aspect of the game well and jumped out to a 4-0 record to start the season.  We also won back-to-back series against WAC members Nevada and San Jose State.  We then put our name on the national stage for the first time by beating Washington State twice in a four game series in Pullman, Wash.  We pounded Fresno State 12-2 in our final meeting of the year with the Bulldogs.  Although we got swept by UC Irvine in 3 games at their place, we played extremely well and lost each game by one run.  We shocked the college baseball world the following weekend by taking 2 of 3 in Arizona from then #20 U of A.  We beat them 22-5 on Sunday for our program’s largest win.  Finally, we took 2 out of 3 from #29 University of Pacific.  Friday’s win over Pacific was the walkoff 3-run homer by Jeremy Rodriguez in the 10th inning.  It was a great season for the Roadrunners from CSUB.

For the first time in program history, the CSUB baseball team has seniors graduating this year.  We have 9 seniors leaving this year and hopefully they will all get drafted next week in the MLB Amateur Draft.  Derek Geisinger, Brandon Boren, Kyle Richardson, JJ Henry, Jason Kudlock, Joey Mills, Erik Draxton, Sam Jones, and Mickey Jannis comprise the first graduating class from CSUB baseball.  I will miss all of you guys and it was an absolute pleasure to spend the last two years of my life playing along side of you!

For those of us coming back, today started the beginning of next season.  Next season we will be postseason eligible for the first time in program history.  We will continue to work hard by playing in summer leagues across the country and working hard in the weight room.  I really appreciate those of you who followed my blogs throughout the year!

-Nick

The CSUB baseball team wasted a golden opportunity this last weekend at TCU.  We traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, to take on the #6 ranked Horned Frogs of TCU.  There were a couple of different elements that our team had to deal with while on this road trip.  First of all, there is a two hour time change from California to Texas.  In essence, we ended up losing two hours of sleep from what we were used to.  The second element that we were forced to deal with was the humidity.  California’s heat is typically dry in nature.  However, Texas has a lot of humidity to go along with their mid-90’s temperatures.  These two abnormalities were no excuse for our poor showing this weekend at TCU.

TCU swept the three game series and outscored us 32-1.  TCU played extremely well and we played really bad.  We did not take control from the mound, batter’s box, or even on defense.  On the other hand, TCU pitched outstanding, played excellent defense, and did a great job of situational hitting.  As a result, TCU won 13-1, 12-0, and 7-0.  The games this weekend felt a lot like some of our games last year.  It felt like the games just got away from us early and we had trouble slowing the game down.  This weekend really surprised us because we had been playing really well.  We figured we were ready for our program’s toughest test, but we were wrong.  We definitely took a step back this weekend as our overall record fell to 23-28.  We have five games left on the season.  We have an opportunity to finish the season on a high note.  It would be nice to go 5-0 and finish the season with a .500 record.

My younger brother, Matt (20), just signed his letter of intent with Tarleton State University, a Division II school in Stephenville, Texas.  We had a 6:30pm game on Friday night, so we didn’t have to leave for the field until 3:50 pm.  My brother hadn’t been to the school yet and I was really curious to see where he was going to be going to school next year.  I rented a car from Enterprise right when they opened on Friday morning.  I found out that they DON’T pick you up.  Well, Stephenville is a little over an hour away from Fort Worth, so Mickey and I left hotel at about 8:30a m.  The campus was gorgeous!  I introduced myself to his head baseball coach and he gave Mickey and I a tour of the entire campus.  Here are a couple pictures from our “road trip.”  I am excited for my brother because I think he will really like it there and will fit in quickly with his teammates.

We are entering our final week of games for the 2010 season.  We play at UC Santa Barbara on Tuesday, at Loyola Marymount on Wednesday, and at Cal Poly for a weekend series to end the season.  I will write this season’s last blog after this weekend’s games at Cal Poly!

-Nick

The CSUB baseball continued its winning ways this past weekend at Hardt Field.  We took on the University of Pacific, which is currently vying for second place in the Big West.  The weekend served as the last homestand for the season and for our 9 graduating seniors (Derek Geisinger, Brandon Boren, Kyle Richardson, JJ Henry, Jason Kudlock, Joey Mills, Mickey Jannis, Erik Draxton, and Sam Jones).  After beating UC Santa Barbara and taking two of three in Arizona last week, we kept the momentum going by winning another series against a Big West team.

Friday’s game resembled our Friday night game against the University of Arizona.  It was a “dog fight” and was tied 1-1 at the end of 9 innings.  Jeremy Rodriguez then launched a 3-run walkoff home run to right field in the bottom of the 10th to win the game!  Mickey Jannis pitched an extremely effecitve 7 innings by only allowing 1 run and tallying 10 strikeouts.  Martin Medina followed Jannis by tossing 3 scoreless innings and earning the win in relief.  One of our pitchers, Jonny Montoya, had his camera in the dugout and actually got video of Jeremy’s walkoff home run!  It can be found by going to YouTube and typing in “CSUB vs UOP Walkoff Words Exchanged.”  After J-Rod’s homer, UoP’s catcher started yelling at Jeremy to not watch the ball and start running.  As a result, both benches cleared as J-Rod rounded the bases.  No one got into a fight but the UoP catcher was ejected from Saturday’s game.

Saturday’s game started off well because we jumped out to an early 5-0 lead after 4 innings.  However, we were unable to extend our lead and Pacific scored 8 unanswered runs enroute to an 8-5 victory.  We lead the game 5-1 going into the 5th inning but Pacific’s offense came to life and their bullpen shut us down for the rest of the game.  Pacific is a very good hitting team (.330 team average) so we knew that they could hit the ball.  Coach Kernen always preaches that if you keep your pitches in good areas and throw them with intent you will be successful, no matter who you are facing.  Unfortunately, our bullpen was unable to get the job done in Saturday’s game.

Sunday’s game was preceeded by a ceremony that celebrated the 9 graduating seniors.  These 9 seniors comprise the first graduating class from CSUB’s baseball program.  It is kind of a weird feeling for me because if I didn’t redshirt last year, I would be graduating with this group.  These guys have been awesome to play with and to get to know over the past two seasons.  We came out ready to play on Sunday and beat Pacific 15-6 to complete the series win.  All 6 senior position players got a hit in the game and Mike McCarthy went the distance to earn the win.  It was an all-around good game in all three phases of the game.  We are very pleased with our developement thus far and look to continue our great play this weekend against TCU.  TCU is ranked in the top 10 in the nation and will be a great test for our ballclub.  We will be traveling to Fort Worth on Wednesday and we play the Horned Frogs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  I will write again on Sunday to recap our weekend against the highest ranked opponent in our program’s history.

Our team had a banquet dinner Saturday night after our game to honor our graduating class of seniors.  At the banquet, the parents got together and bought a stroller for our shortstop Kyle Richardson.  He recently had his first child and the parents gave him the stroller on Saturday night.  Here’s a picture of Kyle and his new stroller:

-Nick

This past weekend the CSUB baseball team won two out of three games against the #20 ranked University of Arizona.  With these two wins, we finally broke through against a top opponent and stepped onto the national stage in Division I college baseball.  We also beat UC Santa Barbara on Tuesday afternoon at Hardt Field.  We played extremely well this week and won three of our four games.

Jonathon Montoya pitched the game of his life on Tuesday when we took on UC Santa Barbara.  He was in absolute control of the game from the first pitch to the last pitch.  He was locating his curveball and effectively mixing speeds to keep the Gauchos off balanced the entire game.  Brandon Boren, our first hitter of the game, launched a solo home run to right field in the bottom of the first to put us ahead, 1-0.  That was all the run support that J-mo would need as he tossed a complete game shutout.  He finished with 10 strikeouts and only 1 walk in 9 innings.  We added on three more runs after Boren’s homer and went on to win by a final of 4-0.

This weekend’s series against the University of Arizona was special to me because I was born and raised in Arizona.  I grew up as an ASU Sun Devil fan and always hated the U of A.  It was also important because my family was able to come and watch me play for the first time since the opening weekend against Air Force.  We left for Arizona on Thursday afternoon, but took an unconventional route to get there.  We all took the bird bus to Bakersfield airport, just like any other out of state trip.  However, our team would be split up on two different flights on our way to Tucson, Ariz.  16 players and the 3 coaches took a flight from Bakersfield to LAX.  They then flew from LAX to Tucson’s airport after an hour layover.  On the other hand, myself and 7 other teammates flew from Bakersfield to San Francisco.  We had an hour layover in San Fran’ and caught our connecting flight to Tucson.  It was an interesting way to start the road trip, but everything worked out and we all got there safely.

Game 1 of the series was an absolute “dog-fight”, as our guys would call it.  Mickey Jannis started for us and pitched an excellent ball game.  He has been pitching really well lately and Friday’s game was no exception.  He was mixing his two-seam fastball, cutter, slider, and change-up very effectively.  He threw 9 innings, gave up 6 hits, two runs (one earned), and got the no decision.  After 9 complete innings, the score was tied at 2 apiece.  The 10th inning was very eventful as both teams had runners in scoring position but were unable to score.  We finally broke through in the top of the 11th inning by scoring 5 runs in the frame.  Jeremy Rodriguez put us ahead with a two run single in the 11th and we never looked back.  We won game one of the series by a final score of 7-2.  It was a great win for the program because we finally broke through and won a game against a nationally ranked opponent.

Game 2 of the series was all about the Wildcat offense.  They won the game by a score of 17-6.  Our pitching staff got the ball up in the zone and walked too many hitters.  Our defense also committed 5 errors in the game, which is extremely uncharacteristic of our team.  The final score was very indicative of the way we played.  Our pitching, defense, and hitting simply did not get the job done.  However, while it was a really frustrating game because we got blown out, I did have an exciting pinch-hit at bat in the top of the 9th inning.  I was able to hit a two run homerun off of U of A’s closer.  This hit was my first Division I hit, RBI, run, and homerun.  The moment was even more special because it was in my home state of Arizona and my parents were in the stands to see it.  It was a tough way to lose, but Coach Kernen said we needed to put the game behind us and get ready to win the series on Sunday.  He pointed out that we have never won a series against a Pac-10 team and that it would be a great accomplishment for us to be remembered by.

On Sunday, Arizona’s head coach, Andy Lopez, had a chance to win his 1,000th career game as a head coach if they beat us.  However, we jumped out to an early lead and never looked back as we scored the most runs in a game in our short program’s history.  We knocked out UA’s starting pitcher after 1 inning and a 7-0 lead.  We continued to hit the ball with authority and had great plate discipline as we coaxed a lot of walks from the UA pitching staff.  Mike McCarthy took the ball for us on Sunday and pitched great.  He threw a complete game and allowed only 5 runs in the effort.  We pounded out 19 hits and scored a program record 22 runs to claim our first Pac-10 series victory, 22-5.  It was a statement game for our team.  It was a game to show the college baseball world that we are ready to compete on the national stage.  Sunday’s game was also Mother’s Day, so it was great to be able to have my mom in attendance.  Happy Mother’s Day, mom!

Here are some random pictures from this weekend.  This first picture is of the “San Fran Crew” who took our tiny plane to San Fran before catching a connecting flight to Tucson.

Pictured: Matt Reyes, Eric Sanchez, Brandon Van Dam, Kevin Younger, and Juan Padilla, Jeremy Rodriguez, and Kyle Richardson are in the background.  The next picture is my parents and I after Saturday night’s game.

This is a picture of my home run ball from Saturday’s game.  I gave it to my mom as an early Mother’s Day present.

Here’s a picture of the scoreboard after Sunday’s huge win against Arizona.

Finally, here’s Martin and J-Rod having a great time in some massage chairs at the Tucson airport prior to our flight back to Bakersfield.

We now have a 21-24 record and jumped approximately 50 spots in the RPI this weekend.  We have been playing really well lately and we are looking to finish out the final 11 games of the season in the same fashion.  We have our final home games of the season against Pacific this weekend.  I will write again for you on Sunday to recap the week for you.  Thanks for following the ‘Runners!

The CSUB baseball team bounced back from a three game sweep at UC Riverside to beat Loyola Marymount 13-3 this past Tuesday at Hardt Field.  We played well in all three facets of the game and the final score dictated corresponded with our efforts.  It was nice to beat Loyola Marymount because coach Robinson previously was the head coach there.  It was a good bounce back game for our team.

We played UC Irvine over the weekend.  Irvine was the number one ranked team in the nation for most of last year.  They were ranked number 29 coming into our series at their home ballpark in Irvine, Calif.  We played the Anteaters extremely tough over the weekend but came up one run short in each of the three games.  We lost 3-2 on Friday and Saturday, while we lost 8-7 in Sunday’s game.  Irvine’s pitching staff was extremely talented and knew how to pitch.  They started an All-American in Friday’s game (Daniel Bibona) and another All-American in Sunday’s game (Pettis).  Their Saturday starter was named the National Collegiate Pitcher of the Week in the previous week.  Needless to say, we faced some great pitching.  However, we countered with great pitching of our own.  Mickey Jannis threw exceptionally well on Friday night while giving up only 5 hits and 3 runs in an 8 inning complete game.  He went toe-to-toe with Bibona and actually out pitched him in our minds.  Martin Medina came in relief of Matt Reyes on Saturday and pitched extremely well out of the bullpen to keep the game close.  On Sunday, we scored 5 runs in the final two innings to tie the game at 7 apiece.  However, Irvine hit a walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 9th to win, 8-7.  It was a tough way to lose but we played right with UCI the entire weekend.  We actually out hit them on the weekend as well.  As Coach Kernen has been saying lately, we are right on the cusp of breaking through.  We have been so close and this weekend was more of the same.  It’s pretty amazing that a second year baseball program could be playing as well as we have been this year.  Like Kernen has said, we are by far the best 18-23 team in the nation.

We are very pleased because we are playing well but frustrated at the same time because we are ready to break through and win some of these close games against the top teams in the nation.  We will get another shot this weekend when we head to the University of Arizona for a three game series.  I am excited because this is kind of like a homecoming for me, Jason Kudlock, and Derek Geisinger because we are all from Arizona.  Although we live two hours north of Tucson, we will have a lot of family and friends at the games.  We play UC Santa Barbara tomorrow at Hardt Field and then leave for U of A on Thursday.

We are halfway through our quarter, so a lot of guys are starting to have midterms.  I have two midterms tonight (Business Law and Management..sounds fun, right?).  I need to study but here are a couple of random pictures from our trip this weekend to Irvine.  This first one is the back of Mickey’s head.  His hair is getting out of control! Haha.

The next four pictures are from UCI’s baseball field.  It is one of the best fields that I have ever played at.  The dugouts were huge, the field was in pristine shape, and the atmosphere was great.

Well, I hope everyone has a great week and I want to wish my mom an early Happy Mother’s Day.  I will update my blog next week when we return from Arizona.  Have a good week!

-Nick