Lions Ready to Step to the Batter’s Box : Baseball: Loyola believes it has the pitching and defense to erase the memory of a 16-36 season.

Jody Robinson would just as soon forget his first season as Loyola Marymount baseball coach.

The Lions finished 16-36 and were fifth in the West Coast Conference. It was their worst season since 1983 and their lowest finish in a conference since 1984.

Quite a comedown for a program that had 256 victories over the previous six seasons and had been to the NCAA playoffs three of the last four years.

What went wrong with the Lions in 1992?

In a word: everything.

“We didn’t play defense and the pitching wasn’t good,” Robinson said. “The one thing we did do was hit, but that was only once in a while.”

Loyola made 121 errors and the pitching staff had an earned-run average of 6.87 and gave up 265 walks--an average of more than five a game.

But the Lions’ prospects appear better as they prepare for their season opener at 2 p.m. today against UC Santa Barbara in Goleta.

Never mind that Loyola was picked to finish fifth in the conference in a preseason poll of coaches.

“We think we’ve improved ourselves in almost every area,” Robinson said. “We think we’re a lot better team athletically. We have more options than last year and a lot more experience.”

Loyola was hard-pressed to find a dependable starting pitcher last season, but this year’s team appears to have four: junior Shane Bowers, sophomore Shawn Hammett, junior John Straits and freshman Andy Collett.

Bowers and Hammett played summer ball with the Danville Dans of the Central Illinois Collegiate League. Hammett was 3-8 with a 5.48 earned-run average as a freshman, but pitched well with Danville, where he was 7-2 with a 1.90 ERA.

Straits is a transfer from Mt. San Jacinto College who had 13 complete games and a 2.71 ERA. Collett struck out 68 and walked only eight in 51 innings at Arroyo Grande High.

Loyola also appears deeper in its bullpen with the return of Damon Hamura and Brian Fitzgerald, and the addition of Ryan Graves, a freshman from Riverside Poly. Robinson can also turn to outfielder Mike Seal and infielder Jesse Ibarra for pitching help.

“I think we have a lot of good young pitchers coming up,” Bowers said. “It’s just a matter of how fast they jell. But I think our staff is more complete than last year.”

The defense has also been strengthened with the addition of freshman shortstop Ryan Ott, who gained a reputation as an adept fielder at Brea Olinda High. That has allowed Robinson to move returning infielder Greg Carl from shortstop to his more accustomed position of second base.

“I think Carl’s going to surprise some people at second base,” Robinson said. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on him, but I haven’t seen too many people with better range than him.”

Two other defensive standouts for the Lions are first baseman Anthony Napolitano and Seal. Both players should also be among the team’s offensive leaders.

Napolitano, Loyola’s only first team all-conference selection last season, batted .343 with 37 runs batted in and a conference-leading 23 doubles as a junior. He batted .311 to earn second team all-conference honors as a freshman. The Lions should also receive help from Carl, who batted .293 in 1991, and outfielder Darren Sugiyama, who batted .282 with seven home runs and a team-leading 42 RBIs.

Other expected starters include Andy Biaggi at catcher, Naoi Yuen at third base, Mike Peters in center field and Ibarra at designated hitter.

With the graduation of outfielder Matt Marks, who led the team with nine homers last season, Loyola is searching for a dependable power hitter.

The Lions also lost another top hitter, utility player Chad Nichols, who transferred to Pepperdine. But offense is the least of Robinson’s concerns.

“That was a strong point last year and we think it’s going to be a strength again,” he said. “Pitching and defense is what we’ve been focusing on because that was our weakness last year.”

Even more important to the team’s success this year might be an improved attitude.

“I think we can use last year as a learning experience,” Napolitano said. “But the experience was a pretty negative one and everyone doesn’t want to go through that again.”

Said Sugiyama: “I think our intensity is a lot more this year. We’re a lot more hungry to win. That’s especially true for the seniors like myself. It’s pretty much our last go-round. I just want to leave college with a smile on my face and the only way to do that is to win a league championship.”

The Lions will play their first seven games on the road, but Bowers said the team has the character and experience to work its way out of any slump.

“There really wasn’t any leadership last year, but this year we had a lot of confidence,” he said. “If we get in a bad situation, we’re just going to battle out of it. We’ve got a lot of young players who came from winning programs and they know what it takes to win. We also have a lot more experience coming back and that should make us a better team.”

Just how much better the Lions will be remains to be seen.

“You can never say, ‘Gosh, we’re going to get off to a good start because of last year,’ ” Robinson said. “You’d always like to do that and I have confidence that we will. But it’s the beginning of the year and everyone’s excited and that’s the way it should be.

“Last year our motto was ‘play hard.’ This year it’s ‘play hard and play better.’ ”