College Baseball : Pepperdine’s Gorrie Says His Team Is Not Too Strong for WCAC

Pepperdine is generally regarded as one of the best teams on the West Coast. There also is a prevailing opinion that the Waves are much stronger than the competition they will encounter in the West Coast Athletic Conference.

Coach Dave Gorrie concedes that his team is good and that it has the necessary ingredients to be a title contender. But he disagrees with those who say that Pepperdine is better than the six other WCAC teams.

“I hate to put myself in an all win and no lose situation by saying we should win,” Gorrie said in his office at Eddy D. Field Stadium Saturday before the Waves swept a doubleheader from the University of San Francisco to improve their WCAC record to 5-1. “You still have to play the games and win. I’m convinced that this league will be difficult to win.”

Pepperdine assistant coach Jim Gattis agreed, saying: “You have to play well to beat the other teams, no matter how good they are. It’s not like football, where you get up for one game a week. We play three conference games a week. . . . You have to keep that intensity level up or you’ll lose.”

Pepperdine is an overwhelming favorite to win the WCAC, but Gorrie has mixed feelings about leaving the Southern California Baseball Assn., where the Waves played in the shadow of Augie Garrido’s Cal State Fullerton teams for eight years. Pepperdine finished second three times and had a composite record of 134-85-1. Fullerton won or shared every title and was 173-46-1.

“I was happy with the old alignment,” Gorrie said. “The competition was good, and there was local interest. One virtue of the old league was you played a four-game series in the same week. It was a war of attrition, a good test of your pitching depth. But this revives some old rivalries, like Pepperdine and Santa Clara, and we still have Loyola and San Diego.

“I always loved to play Augie’s teams. . . . We had a real good rivalry with them. But it was Loyola and San Diego that always proved to be tough for us. We’d lose one or two to them, and that made the difference in the standings.”

Pepperdine’s pitching and defense have been particularly impressive, and are the main reasons the Waves, 18-5-1 overall, have won six straight and 11 of their last 12.

In the 5-1, 2-1, 6-1 sweep of USF, Scott Marrett, David Miramontes and Mike Fetters combined to limit the Dons to 11 hits while yielding just five walks. The Waves didn’t make any errors in the series and have commited only 19 in 24 games.

Pepperdine’s team earned-run average is an excellent 3.40. In 204 innings, the staff has given up only 156 hits and 94 walks. In WCAC play, the ERA is 1.29. In the 49 innings of the six conference games, Wave pitchers have allowed 28 hits and 14 walks.

“The staff has been pitching well, and our hitters are producing,” Gorrie said. “But defense is our strong point. No matter how good your hitting is, you have to play good defense and not give away any games.

“I’m very pleased with our progress. We’re beginning to put things together. But there’s room for improvement, and I think that’s good. I think we can be even better.”

Cal Poly Pomona probably has the most difficult nonconference schedule in the country. Pomona is a Division II school that plays only Division I teams. Not just any Division I teams, but the best in Southern California. The Broncos don’t often win, but the competition prepares them for California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games.

Pomona is 7-10-1 this season and has lost five straight since defeating USC. The Broncos also have beaten UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Long Beach. Some of their losses were to USC, Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and San Diego State.

Pomona opened a three-game series with the University of Hawaii Tuesday night at Honolulu. While there, the Broncos also will play BYU. One of the teams they’ll play upon returning to the mainland is Pepperdine.

Baseball Notes Although it doesn’t rank up there with, say, Fullerton-Texas and USC-Arizona State as far as attractive matchups go, Saturday’s game at Pasadena between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech is no less significant. It’s the first time the prestigious academic institutions have met in baseball. The Caltech game is MIT’s season opener and the first of seven the Engineers will play in Southern California. . . . MIT, a Division III team, is led by outfielder Vinnie Martinelli, who set a school record last season with a .426 batting average. Martinelli, a senior, also excels in the classroom. He’s a materials science and engineering majop with a cumulative grade-point average of 4.7 (on a scale of 5.0). . . . The 18th Riverside Baseball Invitational starts Monday with games at UC Riverside and the Riverside Sports Center. The eight-team, round-robin tournament is considered the best showcase of college baseball talent this side of the Division I World Series at Omaha. This year’s field is one of its strongest. Defending champion San Diego State heads the Blue Division, which also includes Arizona State, Missouri and Harvard. UCLA, Oregon State, Air Force and UC Riverside make up the Gold Division. A total of 29 games will be played in six days, including the championship game matching the winners of the Blue and Gold divisions. . . . Pepperdine’s Mike Fetters turned in one of the finest pitching performances of the season last Saturday when he beat USF, 6-1, in the second game of a doubleheader. The sophomore right-hander yielded only one hit, a long home run to left by Dave Sheldon with one out in the seventh inning, and walked just two. Fetters benefited from some outstanding defensive support by third baseman Paul Faries and second baseman Andy Stankiewicz. Faries, a sophomore, had seven assists, almost all of them of the acrobatic variety. Fetters, who hadn’t pitched in 11 days because of a pulled back muscle, also saved the Waves’ 2-1 win in the opener. He came in with the bases loaded and nobody out in the last inning and retired the side by facing two batters. The first bounced into a double play, and the next grounded to third. . . . Pepperdine resumes its drive to the WCAC title with a three-game series against Loyola Marymount (0-3 in conference play, 10-15 overall) starting Friday at Malibu.

USC and Arizona State, two teams seemingly going in opposite directions, open a three-game Pacific 10 Southern Division series Friday night at Dedeaux Field. The Trojans, 3-6 in conference play and 14-16 overall after losing two of three at Stanford, have dropped five of their last six. Arizona State had lost seven of its last eight, 11 of 13 and 18 of 22 going into its three-game series with UCLA last week in Tempe. But the Sun Devils got well against the Bruins, winning all three. They are 4-5 in Pac-10 play and 12-21 overall.