Cal Poly finishes baseball season on a high note

On Saturday afternoon, Cal Poly baseball finished one of the weirder seasons in my recent memory with a 10-5 win over UC Davis at Baggett Stadium. The win moved the Mustangs’ record to 9-9 in Big West play and 32-25 overall.

Saturday might have been Justin Calomeni’s final game on the mound at Baggett Stadium. He is a junior and is draft-eligible By Owen Main

On the one hand, Cal Poly started conference play with series wins over UCSB and Cal State Fullerton and looked like they might have a shot at the Big West. On the other hand, the Mustangs sputtered the at Long Beach State and CSUN en route to a 9-9 finish in Big West play.

On the one hand, the Mustangs pitchers looked dominant at times. On the other hand, their entire starting rotation was suspended for a whole weekend in the middle of conference play.

On the one hand, the Mustangs had a winning record for the season. On the other hand, the team committed 83 errors in 57 games. That was the most Cal Poly has made since Larry Lee’s first season, when the team made 97 errors. You get the idea.

In most years Cal Poly has been successful enough to sniff postseason play — especially since the bats were deadened at the college level, the number of errors has been close to the number of games — somewhere in the 50’s or 60’s. Defense will absolutely be a theme going into next season.

When Coach Lee says, “it’s about damn time”

A photo posted by Connor O’Hare (@cpohare13) on May 31, 2016 at 6:43pm PDT

A nice senior day

Under sunny blue skies, senior John Schuknecht started senior day with a three-RBI double in the first inning and fellow senior Connor O’Hare finished the day with an RBI triple in the 8th inning — O’Hare’s first extra base hit as a Mustang. It was a great moment. Redshirt junior Brett Barbier was also a contributor, scoring a run in the first inning and drawing three walks in the game.

John Schuknecht started his final game at Cal Poly off with a 3-RBI double in the first inning. By Owen Main

Pitching Promise

A total of 10 different Cal Poly pitchers started games in 2016, and nine of them will likely be back. Early-on in conference play, it looked like Kyle Smith, Erich Uelmen, and Jarred Zill were locks. Other pitchers like Spencer Howard, Craig Colen, and Justin Bruihl could all make strides and compete for starting roles in 2017.

Here’s looking at next year

Cal Poly needs a few things position-wise and probably has some good players coming in. Here’s a list of incoming freshman next year. Defense will certainly be a focus as Larry Lee assembles his team next season. Two later additions include Elijah Skipps and Jack Kuzma. Skipps is a power-hitter who will probably be a big, strong DH or corner infielder in the tradition of Brian Mundell. He spent his first year at Arizona before bouncing over to Cypress College. Mustang fans will hope Skipps will be able to replace some of the pop left by players like Mundell and John Schuknecht over the past year.

Extremely blessed to say that I will be attending Cal Poly SLO to further my baseball career! ?⚾️ #GoStangs pic.twitter.com/cO71csmpHE

— Elijah Skipps (@eliskipps) May 1, 2016

I was hoping Brett Barbier would be back next year. The redshirt junior went through senior day festivities and will be graduating. By Owen Main

For his part, Kuzma was listed as a shortstop, and a shortstop is something Cal Poly desperately needs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Brett Binning. His positive energy was a big reason Cal Poly has a winning record this year. He did an all-right job defensively in his role this season, but he doesn’t have the strongest bat and is probably more of a backup player who can fill multiple infield positions. Kyle Marinconz also did OK, but he’s a natural second-baseman and should continue to mash next year from second base.

Shortstop will be key next season and there will be a few Mustangs battling to show Larry Lee they have what it takes.

In the end, I got to 22 of Cal Poly’s 31 home games while my wife had our second child midseason. Because of that, I wasn’t able to post as much as I wanted to via the website. Still, hopefully I managed to be somewhat informative and maybe informed on Twitter throughout the year.

Here’s to a great offseason. Fall ball is just a few months away for these guys… .

Randomness

They say it’s not healthy to think of what could have been. Nobody ever said I was always healthy though.

A few Cal Poly players have been drafted and signed by professional teams before they could get on-campus over the past few years. Logan Webb is a Giants farmhand currently in Augusta — a team Chase Johnson pitched for a few years ago. He’s still figuring things out it looks like, but then again, he’s only 19 years old.

Luke (Lucas) Williams is a shortstop that the Mustangs had signed. He’s played 38 games in the Gulf Coast League this year and is listed as a third baseman. His stats can be found here.

Photos by Owen Main. To view all photos from 2016, click here.