College Baseball Preview: Cal State Fullerton : NCAA Champions Will Be Strong Again

Coaching college baseball is a lot like managing a Little League team. You really don’t know what kind of talent you’ve got until after the first few practices. Even the coach can’t tell the players without a program.

In a sport where the professionals make no class distinctions, the player turnover from year to year can be depressing. So, while last year’s best pitcher sits in a bus and bounces through the Texas back roads on a rookie-league trip, the college baseball coach frantically recruits anybody in a baseball cap and hopes for the best.

Take Augie Garrido, for instance. The Cal State Fullerton coach has managed to make 10 consecutive appearances in the NCAA playoffs, but even he sometimes wonders how he does it.

Last year, he had lined up three highly regarded pitchers, all of whom were pegged to step into the starting rotation. All three signed pro contracts a week before school started. It wasn’t anything new to Garrido. Dan Petry and Mike Witt signed national letters of intent to attend Fullerton, but both changed their minds when the pros upped the ante.

So Garrido pieced together the 1984 Titans--featuring a mixture of doubles hitters and “finesse” pitchers--and they won the national championship. Ten players off that squad signed professional contracts--even the 5-7, 140-pound David (Eddie Delzer) whose slow curves hypnotized Goliath (top-ranked Texas) in the final game of the College World Series. And four others graduated.

Garrido has three-fourths of his 1984 infield back, but he has just two returning pitchers (with a combined 66 innings of major-college experience) and two returning outfielders (who combined for 71 at-bats in 86 games last season).

“Winning the national championship did have a great impact on this team, though,” Garrido insisted. “A lot of these guys had to choose between lucrative pro contracts and coming here. The national championship, the exposure on ESPN . . . they wanted to be part of that experience.

“A high number of the people on last year’s team were rewarded with professional contracts and that opened the doors for new people to come in. It keeps things fresh. It has sort of a cleansing effect.”

New faces or not, the folks at Collegiate Baseball ranked Fullerton No. 3 in the country in their latest poll. “The Titans lost a bundle of players . . . but don’t shed any tears. They also had the fifth-best recruiting year in Division I,” the newspaper reported in its preseason look at the Top 30 teams in the country.

Garrido signed 17 players, 13 of whom were junior college transfers. The list of new recruits also includes nine highly sought pitchers, three of whom are second-round draft picks.

Fullerton’s traditionally strong recruiting year has made the Titans--who have won or shared 11 consecutive conference titles--the favorites in the newly realigned Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. They spent the last eight years in the Southern California Baseball Assn.

The Titans are off to a 2-3 start after dropping the first two games of a three gameseries against fourth-ranked Arizona State. The final game of the series will be televised on ESPN at 5 p.m. today. Fullerton also has series scheduled with No. 1 Texas, No. 9 Stanford, Arizona and UCLA.

A capsule look at the defending NCAA champions:

PITCHERS--Right-hander Damon Allen, who led the Titan football team to an 11-1 on-the-field record last season, was 3-2 last year with four saves in just 50 innings of work on the diamond. But the Detroit Tigers were impressed enough to send a scout to football practice and offer him $40,000 to sign. The only other returning pitcher is Paul Hartwig, who had a 1-1 record in 16 innings. Garrido is relying on the arms of the nine recruits, including junior Mark Winner (second-round pick by Boston in ‘84), junior Mike Belanger (second-round pick by Oakland in ‘84), junior Dion Beck (12th-round pick by San Francisco in ‘84), junior Bobby Nettles (second-round pick by Seattle in ‘83), freshman Mark Harkey (14th-round pick by Atlanta in ‘84), Larry Casian (a sophomore transfer from Oral Roberts) and relief pitcher Mike Schooler (Golden West). “We’re at the stage where the pitchers are beginning to establish their roles and the staff is taking shape,” Garrido said. “Right now, Belanger and Beck are definite starters and Schooler looks like the short relief guy.”

CATCHERS--All-American Bob Caffrey (a first-round draft choice of the Montreal Expos) will be missed. He hit .313 with 28 homers and drove in 90 runs. He also had a strong, accurate arm. John Eccles, a junior transfer from Santa Ana College, heads the list of five catchers on the Fullerton roster. His play in fall ball earned him the starting spot, but he’s gotten off to a slow start. Senior Roger Zottneck and junior Rich Slominski back up Eccles.

INFIELDERS--This area is by far the Titans’ strength. Second baseman Jose Mota, son of Dodger coach Manny, was the No. 2 hitter last year but is leading off this season. He batted .357 and struck out just 22 times in 286 at-bats last season. Shane Turner wasn’t playing shortstop early last year, but the Titans went 32-5 after Garrido settled on him at short. Third baseman Blaine Larker was a walk-on last year and made the All-College World Series team. Larker, however, will be sharing time at third with John Fishel, who led the team in almost every offensive category and hit .520 with 10 RBIs in the College World Series to earn MVP honors. Fishel, a three-year starter in the outfield, will play third base to improve his professional prospects. Kevin Reimer, a power-hitting left-hander from Orange Coast College who played on the Canadian National team, is starting at first base or designated hitter. Slominski, a two-year lettermen, will also see action at first.

OUTFIELDERS--The outfield positions are pretty much wide open. Larker will play left and Fishel will play center when they’re not at third to “keep all four veterans in the lineup,” according to Garrido. Transfers Alan Stankiewicz (Cerritos College), Bob Mellano (Oklahoma) and Jef Garcia (Orange Coast College) will vie with returnees Jeff Farber (a senior who hit .271 last year) and Keith Watkins (a sophomore who hit .417 in 12 at-bats last season) for the other two spots. Stankiewicz (right field) and Garcia (left field) have gotten starting chances already this year. “Outfield is the spot where we have the least experience, but I wouldn’t call it our weakest spot,” Garrido said. “We have a lot of players with a lot of potential.”