Titan Pitchers on the Ball After Talk

When Cal State Fullerton, the nation’s top-ranked college baseball team, went into a three-game series against Nevada last weekend, associate coach George Horton was more than a little concerned.

Horton has earned a national reputation for developing the Titan pitching staffs, but this year’s group seemed to be lagging behind an offense that’s averaging 10 runs per game and hitting 20 points higher than the school record.

But after all, hadn’t the Titans lost only four games? So why get anxious?

“If we’re going to win another national championship, we can’t do it with just our hitting,” Horton said. “As good a hitting team as last year’s was, our pitching had a lot to do with us winning. There has to be some quality defense.”

Horton was unhappy when Titan pitchers gave up 13 runs in two losses at New Mexico State recently. His patience wore thin when Fullerton went out to a six-run lead in the opener Friday night against Nevada, only to have the lead cut to one run before the Titans scrambled back for an 8-5 victory.

Horton called the pitchers together before Saturday’s game and told them he was seeing signs he didn’t like. He said their attention to fundamentals and conditioning had been slipping and there were too many displays of frustration.

“In my mind, there were a lot of little things going wrong that were accumulating,” Horton said. “And I told them I was disappointed.”

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Horton’s talk must have helped. Brent Billingsley pitched a four-hit shutout Saturday night, then Scott Hild held Nevada scoreless through eight innings Sunday while giving up six hits, and the Titans swept the series.

“One of the things I told them was that if we have to throw a three-ball pitch, we do it aggressively, without worrying about it,” Horton said. “And we don’t react negatively when we do have a base on balls. Billingsley didn’t have good three-ball pitches early, but when I talked to him about it again, he was fine the rest of the game. And Hild did well too.”

What has been missing on this year’s staff, Horton says, is consistency.

“That can be a result of some complacency,” Horton said. “You either get worse or you get better, but you don’t stay the same as a pitcher. Maybe we were too satisfied, and if that happened, that’s my fault.”

Consistency was what Ted Silva gave the Titans a year ago when he won a school-record 18 games as a senior.

“The pitching this season has been adequate, but what we’re missing is someone to emerge the way Teddy did last year,” Horton said. “Both [Tim] Dixon and [Jon] Ward had their ups and downs. What made Teddy the pitcher he was is that when he was getting rocked a bit, he had the ability to take it up another step. That comes from mental toughness. This year, when some of our guys have started going sideways, they haven’t stepped it up. They’ve started pitching tentatively.”

The pitching won-lost records have been helped by Fullerton’s overpowering offense. Among the three starters, Billingsley is 9-0 with a 2.96 earned-run average, Kirk Irvine is 10-2 with a 3.50 ERA and Hild is 6-0 with a 2.71 ERA.

Billingsley, a left-hander who transferred from East Carolina, has shown the potential to be the kind of dominant pitcher Silva was last year. “He’s been the closest thing to a flat-out stopper we’ve had,” Horton said.

Horton thinks Irvine also has that potential but says Irvine hasn’t been sharp since beating Texas, 1-0, in early March.

“I think we’re at a point with him where we have to make some adjustments to get the consistency we think is in there,” Horton said. “We’ll make a couple of little adjustments mechanically.”

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Horton was encouraged by Mark Chavez’s performance in relief Friday. He gave up one hit in three innings and struck out five. Like some of the other pitchers, Chavez has struggled recently after being solid for most of the season.

“That was really the good news for us in the first game of the series,” Horton said. “He’s been wondering why his results haven’t been better lately, but it’s a fine line with relief pitchers. It’s like being a race-car driver. You go full speed and if you make the turn, you can win the race, but if you’re a little off, you might crash into the wall. Mark made one bad pitch in New Mexico and he was off against UNLV.”

Another Titan reliever, Luis Estrella, couldn’t seem to throw a strike Friday night, walking two batters and hitting a third. “That came out of nowhere because he had been making positive strides, but he was totally off it Friday,” Horton said. “Maybe it was an isolated case, but some of our other long relief guys also have been off.”

Pitching depth becomes more of a factor in the postseason and no one has taken the lead as a clear-cut fourth starter.

“We’ve gone from feeling real good about our balance and depth to being concerned about some of those guys,” Horton said. “But some of them haven’t gotten to pitch a lot competitively, and they get rusty. We’re trying to get them some more work in practice to help them get ready.”