Rick Vanderhook had been here before, so the feeling wasn’t totally foreign to him. As for his players, Cal State Fullerton students, a swath of Titan baseball fans younger than 30 and anyone else who jumped on the Cal State Fullerton baseball bandwagon after the Bush Administration, this was as alien as Area 51.
Oh, and that was the first Bush Administration – 1991, to be exact. The last time Cal State Fullerton’s baseball team missed the postseason.
Yes, one year after the Titans barely missed going to Omaha after losing in the 10th inning of Game 3 of the Super Regional to Washington, the baseball equivalent of hell freezing over, Area 51 spilling its secrets and any other improbability you can think up happened.
None of the current Titan baseball players were alive when that happened, but head coach Vanderhook was not only present, but accounted for at Goodwin Field. He was an assistant under Augie Garrido in 1991 when the Titans went 34-22, tied for first in the Big West at 15-6, yet missed the playoffs.
The following year, the Titans went 46-17 and lost to Pepperdine in the national championship game.
Lessons learned here from last year’s 27-26 record and fourth-place finish in the Big West?
If there’s anyone who understands what it means when the Ferrari of the Cal State Fullerton athletic department is in the shop, it’s Vanderhook. He played for Garrido on the 1984 national championship team, served as an assistant under Garrido and George Horton from 1985-1988 and from 1991-2007 — picking up three more rings along the way — and has been at the wheel since 2012.
And in his straightforward, no-punches-pulled manner, Vanderhook addressed what happened to the Titans last year, when a more remarkable string than the postseason skein was snapped. The Titans failed to win 30 games for the first time in 44 years.
“The chip on the shoulder isn’t going away. It is what it is,” Vanderhook said.
“You can’t control the outcome of what happens, but when you learn to stay with the process, the outcome will happen and the process will work with you. We put the cart way too far in front of the horse (last year). Everyone wanted the outcome, and we didn’t pay attention to the process.
“It wasn’t broken. We didn’t do things the right way. We didn’t play the right way, and we couldn’t get extra-base hits. Now, we have a little more ability to do that. It’s hard to score a run having to get three hits. We have to be a little more disciplined in what we do; just be more disciplined in what we do and how we go about things and not take things for granted.”
Nobody is expecting a repeat.
D1 Baseball, Perfect Game and the Big West Preseason Coaches Poll all picked the Titans to get the Ferrari off blocks and win the conference. And there are plenty of signs that alien feeling of sitting home in June will be just that.
In Vanderhook’s defense, last year’s Ferrari had a few dings to the pitching staff and catching core. Injuries to the pitching staff mandated that freshmen and sophomores ate up more innings than Vanderhook would have liked.
Underclassmen pitched 369 of 468 innings, with sophomore Tanner Bibee – who was the No. 3 pitcher in 2018 – becoming the Friday starter and de facto ace.
However last year’s adversity should pay dividends this year.
Bibee’s velocity is up to 93 mph, his wipeout curve is better than ever, and he’s added a change-up. D1 Baseball listed him as the Big West’s No. 4 draft prospect in the 2020 Major League Baseball Draft, and he is poised to be the Titans’ ace in name.
Joining him will be a few of the 11 freshmen Vanderhook brought in: Gavin Kennedy, Peyton Jones and Evan Adolphus, along with returners Michael Knorr, Titus Groeneweg, Dylan Brown and Kyle Luckham, who may move from closer to starter.
“The pitchers have something to prove because most of those guys got roughed up last year,” Vanderhook said. “Are you going to take more roughing up, or are you going to go out and say ‘Let’s do this?’ ”
That solves one ding from last year. The catching issue shored up with Golden West College transfer Austin Schell joining Kameron Guangorena, who potentially could bring his 6-1, 212-pound body and deceptive speed to center field.
Having Guangorena in center means sophomore Jason Brandow, who distinguished himself with a 420-foot home run in the Alumni Game last month, would move to right. Brandow’s power highlights a ding Vanderhook was eager to fix — the Titans’ traditional reliance on small-ball that became an over reliance in 2019.
Cal State Fullerton’s lack of power, the Titans hit only 20 home runs last year (12 in conference) and had a meager .384 team slugging percentage, should be addressed with Brandow, sophomore third baseman Zach Lew and freshman Cameron Repetti from Cypress High, the reigning Orange County Player of the Year and an all-state selection in numerous publications.
A corner infielder and pitcher, Repetti was selected by the Big West coaches as the preseason conference Freshman of the Year.
He’s one of five Cal State Fullerton freshmen ranked by D1 Baseball as impact freshmen in the Big West; a poll the Titans have a hammerlock on. Infielder J.J. Cruz, Kennedy, Jones and Repetti are rankend numbers 2-5 and outfielder Miguel Ortiz comes in at number 10.
“We have bigger bodies now, and we have some power,” Vanderhook said.
“When we play defense, our goal is to make the field small for our opponents, but when you have small bodies on a big field, it’s hard to make it small. If you take a high school team and put them in Angels Stadium, you think ‘Wow, look at all that space.’ But when you put the Angels in there and there’s no place to get a hit, it’s a big difference.”
And we haven’t mentioned shortstop Brett Borgogno, the conference’s No. 11 draft prospect, who will combine with Cruz at second to give Vanderhook his desired strength up the middle. Or senior outfielder-first baseman Isaiah Garcia, who led the Titans in RBI (39) and doubles (nine) last year, while slashing .323/.394/.437.
All of this fine-tuning to the university’s athletic Ferrari should equate to life at Goodwin Field departing the foreign and returning to the familiar: NCAA Regionals, Super Regionals and perhaps, restoration of the “Cal State Omaha” nickname.
“This game is not easy,” Vanderhook said. “This game will tell you what you’re going to do.”
INSIDE TITAN BASEBALL
Did you know…?
That despite last year’s 27-26 record, head coach Rick Vanderhook is 294-176 in eight seasons as CSUF’s head baseball coach. That’s a .625 winning percentage to go with five conference titles and two College World Series appearances.
Quotable
Vanderhook, about his MO on getting the Titans ready for 2020, “They’re getting pushed. I really have pushed them the last few days. I wonder if they understand why they’ve been pushed. I want to see how they react to being pushed. That’s what you don’t find out in scrimmages. I’m going to ask them why, because I don’t like to assume they know why we’re doing this.”