Kendrena Picks Up the Split : CS Northridge: Lively right-hander bowls over opponents with wicked pitch and positive thinking.

Ken Kendrena pitches for Cal State Northridge today. If planning to attend, please wear lightweight clothing and eat sensibly beforehand.

Watching Kendrena pitch can be as exhausting as a workout in tandem with a Jane Fonda video on fast-forward. He is a whirlwind of appendages, all in perpetual motion.

He stomps his cleats on the pitching rubber, pulls at his uniform, tugs his cap, swirls into his windup, uncoils a pitch, does a little hop with a ballet-like scissors step and lands ready to pounce should a ball come his way.

This during warmups.

To say Kendrena is as animated as a cartoon would be to sell him short. He’s more like a full-length Disney feature. Speaking of which, Honey, who shrunk this kid?

He is 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, a rather ordinary looking 20-year-old who is in the midst of an extraordinary baseball season. “If I relied on physical things I wouldn’t have had the season I did,” Kendrena said with a shrug.

Kendrena, a junior transfer from Cypress College, has a record of 12-1 and takes a shrinking earned-run average of 2.34 into his start today against Miami in the second round of the NCAA West Regional II at Fresno State.

Since Feb. 23, he has had 11 starts. He has won on 10 of those occasions and had a no-decision in the other.

In the no-decision, in a game against UC Irvine, he struck out 17 in 11 innings. Back in January, Kendrena struggled to pitch as many as six innings against Grand Canyon.

He credits both his success and his newfound stamina to the power of positive thinking.

In the hours leading up to a game, Kendrena visualizes what he hopes will happen. He sees opponents swinging and missing or sending slow rollers into the gloves of Northridge infielders.

“I go over scouting sheets, but mostly I just sit down, relax and write down what I think is going to happen,” Kendrena said. “I tell myself that I’m the guy. I build up my confidence and let it carry over to the next day.”

Helping Kendrena in the transition from fiction to fact is a darting split-finger fastball he has been developing since his first year of high school.

It is considerably better now than it was during his freshman season at Bishop Amat High when, in his first pitching appearance, Kendrena threw “what I thought was the greatest pitch ever” against Rio Hondo Prep, a Small Schools Division team that “hit it all over the yard.”

Regardless, he kept throwing it, although rarely in games. Kendrena was used most often as a middle infielder and was good enough to earn a partial scholarship to Texas A&M.; However, he lasted only one season.

Aggie coaches recommended he play in junior college rather than have his development stunted by sitting the bench. Kendrena, after considering Rancho Santiago and Cerritos, chose Cypress, where he played middle infield as a freshman before becoming a full-time pitcher last season.

As a sophomore at Cypress, Kendrena was 4-1 with two saves. Northridge Coach Bill Kernen projected him as a relief pitcher, but in the week before the Matadors’ opener, those plans changed.

“He’s been unsung, but there’s no question that over the course of the season he’s been our best pitcher,” Kernen said.

Considering that Craig Clayton and Scott Sharts, the Matadors’ other starting pitchers, are candidates for one publication’s national player-of-the-year award, that’s saying something.

But to Kernen, it’s not saying enough. He says Northridge, a first-year Division I independent, would not have made the NCAA’s 48-team playoff field if not for Kendrena.

“Without him, you can forget it,” Kernen said. “Somebody had to step up and take over a spot in the rotation.”

Kendrena credits Kernen with teaching him a new approach to pitching. “He taught me that I could do a lot more than I thought I could do,” Kendrena said. “I’d heard for so long I couldn’t do this or I shouldn’t be expected to do that. I believed it for a while, but now I say, ‘Why not?’ ”

Kernen envisioned Kendrena as a relief pitcher because he threw strikes, pitched aggressively and was a good fielder. But once Kendrena was moved into the starting rotation, Kernen wanted complete games.

Such expectations were new for Kendrena who, because of his size, had never been asked to extend himself.

“My philosophy has always been, give the ball to the best guys for as many innings as you can without hurting them,” Kernen said. “He had to adjust to that.

And has, rather well. Kendrena has completed 10 of his 15 starts and three times has thrown 150 pitches or more. This despite expending as much energy between pitches as he does actually throwing the ball.

“That’s the style I’ve developed now,” Kendrena said of his antics on the mound. “I go after it with everything I have. Hey, it works and I enjoy it, so that’s what I do.”

Kernen will continue to work with Kendrena on his mental approach. But tinker with his style?

“If he wanted to sprint to the dugout and back between pitches it would be fine with me,” Kernen said. “He’s one of those guys you point in the right direction and let them go full throttle.”