He Is Taking the Toros Under His Wing : Baseball: Cal State Dominguez Hills Coach George Wing believes his young team can rebound to have a successful season.

Last summer, when George Wing started selecting players for the Cal State Dominguez Hills baseball team, he searched for players that would complement the confines of the Toros’ field, where windy conditions make home runs an abnormality.

No sluggers here, Wing projected. He wanted players who could bunt and run. He wanted consistent pitching, something the Toros lacked in his two previous seasons as coach. He also wanted to find a coach who could run the bullpen with authority.

Wing thinks he succeeded in all aspects of his recruiting plan, but he still has a question.

“Do we have the heart to play an entire ballgame?” Wing asked. “We’ve got the ability. We’ve got the intensity, the defense, the pitching depth to be a contender. It all boils down to the intangibles.”

Wing was frustrated in the Toros’ back-to-back, season-opening losses at Arizona Jan 29 and 30, games in which the Toros held leads. Wing contends the team gave away both games. In his first two seasons, although the Toros had losing records, the season-opening series at Arizona provided at least a split. And a victory over a Division I power supplied much-needed confidence.

Instead, victory No. 1 for Dominguez Hills came against NAIA opponent Westmont College, 4-3, on Feb. 5.

Three weeks into the season, the Toros are 2-5, having allowed an average of nearly nine runs a game.

But pitching isn’t the only problem that appears to be confronting the Toros.

Dominguez Hills is in need of an emotional boost. Memories of the 1987 season in which Dominguez Hills went 43-15 and advanced to the Division II College World Series remain. But since then, because of injuries and lack of execution, the Toros have failed to produce a .500 season.

Wing’s predecessor, Andy Lopez, left after an injury-plagued 1988 season that saw the Toros finish 19-30. Lopez took the coaching job at Pepperdine and Wing, who was coaching at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, was hired in July of 1988. He had little time to recruit, but did a credible job of coaching leftovers and walk-ons to a 16-29-1 record in 1989.

In 1990, Wing loaded up on community college transfers, hoping for a quick fix. But the moves failed to produce the desired results and the Toros finished 22-24-2.

The Toros batted a school-record .299 last season, with five starters batting over .300. But the pitching staff had a 4.84 earned-run average.

Wing lost 18 players from last year’s team and recruited a 50-50 mix of freshmen and community college players. He has already noticed a change from last season.

“We have very good youth in this program,” he said. “I feel good about it because the senior guys we have are very, very good people and very, very good players, too. Getting an education is as important to them as playing. The freshmen see this and it makes an impression on them.”

According to Wing, it takes three strong starting pitchers to be successful in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. The Toros open CCAA play Feb. 21 against Chapman College, the first game of a three-game series. Last season Wing had only one pitcher he could consistently count on, Armando Gomez, who has used up his eligibility.

Wing has settled on two pitchers for this season’s rotation, senior left-hander Vincent Aguilar and junior right-hander Mark Tranberg, a transfer from Chapman College.

As for the third pitching spot, Wing has four players he is considering.

“We are waiting to throw some of these guys out there and let that (third) person surface. It’s not like in the past where we have had to create that person. That’s promising.”

The pitching staff is 11 deep and to handle the load, Wing was able to hire former Angel pitcher John Verhoeven, an Anaheim businessman. Verhoeven’s primary assignment: Don’t worry about the staff’s arms, concentrate on its heads.

According to Verhoeven that means: “To know when to throw a particular pitch, how to set up hitters . . . when to pitch around a particular hitter. Besides the strategy, they need to be taught the aggressiveness it takes to be a pitcher and the type of attitude you should take out on the mound with you.”

Verhoeven predicted that a key element in how the Toros do this season may rest with the team’s bullpen, not so much in how the starting rotation develops.

“It will take a couple of weeks for us to develop the bullpen, but I think we will be real good there, also,” he said.

Wing also was able to hire former Kansas City Royal scout Mark Cinesceros to work with the hitters. He retained third base coach Eric Mihkelson, who played on the 1987 Toro team.

Finally, Wing took into consideration the conditions at Dominguez Hills’ home field, which does not favor power hitters. The usually windy currents at the field play havoc with long fly balls. In many ways, he expects the Toros will have to manufacture a lot of their runs.

“We have to execute our short game and handle the bat well,” Wing said.

The Toros are strong at the corners with returning first baseman Darrell Conner and Fresno State transfer Carey Windes at third base. Conner was a second team All-Western Region selection last season after he batted .380 with 20 doubles. Windes started 70 games in three seasons at Fresno State.

Miguel Medina, a returning starter, should see most of the playing time at second base. He drove in 28 runs in 42 games last year.

At catcher, a pair of junior transfers, Steve Whipple, who batted .401 at Citrus College last season, and James Lord, who batted .320 at Cosumnes River, will share the duties.

Two community college transfers and a freshman have failed to establish themselves at shortstop and that has Wing worried. Jun DeSalla, a transfer from Santa Barbara City College, may have a slight edge over City College of San Francisco’s David Blum and freshman Cory Lintern.

Freshman Jeff Richardson appears to have won the starting job in left field after he batted .500 with two doubles and three runs batted in the Arizona series. The center field job appears to belong to John Otte, a transfer from El Camino College who batted .370 in winter league play. Sophomore Eric Shibley, who started 15 games last season for the Toros in left field, will start in right field.