The Long Beach State baseball team wasted no time excelling under first-year coach Eric Valenzuela in 2020.
The Dirtbags began the season 10-5 while climbing to as high as a No. 12 national ranking before it all came to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Considering the team went 14-41 in 2019 – and 8-16 in the Big West Conference – not being able to continue that journey was a tough pill to swallow.
“Yeah, obviously, disappointing all the way around,” said Valenzuela, whose team will play a 40-game conference-only season, starting with a four-game series Friday in Hawaii. “Really disappointed for the older guys, for the draft-eligible guys and just everybody.
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Connor Kokx batted a team-high .400 for the Dirtbags in 2020. (Photo by John Fajardo, Long Beach State Athletics)
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Southpaw Alfredo Ruiz will be the No. 1 starter this season for the Dirtbags after going 3-1 with a 1.80 ERA in the shortened 2020 campaign. (Photo by John Fajardo, Long Beach State athletics)
“The fan base, I think, was really excited. I mean, the last couple of home games that we had here before it ended, it was rocking. It looked like Blair Field was back and it was a lot of fun, and then it gets shut down.”
However, there were gains.
“We could look at it as negative, or whatever, but I think it did a lot, even with the shutdown,” Valenzuela said. “It did a lot for the makeup of our program moving forward, it did a lot for our guys’ confidence.”
Make no mistake, Valenzuela is high on this 2021 team.
“Well, I think we’re super talented,” he said. “And I tell these guys every day, it’s going to be hard for me to look across the field and find a team that we’re going to play as talented as us.”
The Dirtbags are picked to finish second in the conference behind UC Santa Barbara in a coaches’ poll.
Long Beach State returns quite a bit, including two of their top three starting pitchers in southpaw Alfredo Ruiz and Luis Ramirez. Ruiz went 3-1 with a 1.80 ERA as the Saturday starter, Ramirez was 2-0 with a 2.73 ERA as the Sunday starter.
They will be Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, this season with Jack Noble – a transfer from Orange Coast College – getting the nod at No. 3. Noble will actually start on Saturday as well this season because all conference series are four games, with a doubleheader Saturday.
A fourth starter would be the Sunday guy. That role could be filled by southpaw Basilio Pacheco, who did not pitch in 2020 because of injury.
Thomas Greely and true freshman Connor Burns figure to do the bulk of the catching. Greely batted .333 in 21 at-bats in 2020. Valenzuela raves about Burns, who’s out of Don Lugo High in Chino.
“He’s everything you look for in a young catcher,” Valenzuela said. “I tell people this a lot – he looks like how Buster Posey would have looked like as a freshman in college. He’s like 6-2, 6-3, he’s like 190.
“He can really defend already at a young age, he can really throw and he hits. He has more home runs in these four weeks of practice than anybody else on our team and he’s a true freshman.”
Cole Joy, another returner, will see time behind the plate as well. Yet another catcher, Chris Jimenez, who was hurt in 2020, is back.
Returning to the outfield are Connor Kokx, Calvin Estrada, Aidan Malm (.306, 8 RBIs in 2020) and Alex Pimental. Kokx in 2020 led the Dirtbags with a .400 batting average; he slugged .511 and had an on-base percentage of .491.
Returning infielders to watch include Riki DeSa (.235, 7 RBIs in 2020), Chase Luttrell (.370, 4 RBIs), Brennan Rozell and Tanner Carlson. Newcomers include Toren Craig, transfer Luke Chung and true freshmen Jonathon Long and Sebastian Murillo.
Long could start at third base.
“He can really hit,” Valenzuela said. Long batted .550 with seven home runs as a junior at Orange High.
Valenzuela said Murillo is likely his “shortstop of the future.”
Tyler Porter, who played shortstop in 2020, is lost for the season with a shoulder injury.
Sizing up the conference, Valenzuela mentioned UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly as possible tough nuts to crack. He also mentioned rival Cal State Fullerton and CSUN, but discounts no team.
“There’s nobody out here who is just a walkover,” he said. “There’s nobody. Every team is going to be tough. … And with the history of the program, everybody’s going to be gunning for us as well.
“So we’re going to get everybody’s best and everybody’s high energy and all that, so that’s exciting as well.”