Look Out For: Long Beach State Shows Signs of Life In 2020

Image credit: Long Beach State lefthander Alfredo Ruiz (Photo courtesy of Long Beach State Athletics/John Fajardo)

Last season was inarguably difficult for Long Beach State. It went 14-41, finished tied for last in the Big West, and coach Troy Buckley was fired in April. That combination made for modest expectations for 2020 under first-year coach Eric Valenzuela.

But it’s important to keep a few things in mind. For one, the Dirtbags played a schedule so difficult it was borderline sadistic, and their record was undoubtedly depressed by that. The team also dealt with the turmoil surrounding Buckley’s firing. 

Most importantly, though, in 2017 Beach won the Big West with a 20-4 record, hosted a regional and super regional, and was one win away from getting to the College World Series. All that means there’s little reason to believe this is as big a rebuilding job as the 2019 season suggests. 

Perhaps a turnaround was just about establishing new leadership and setting the team on a different course. Valenzuela has given the Dirtbags that, and so far, it’s hard to argue with the results. 

Beach (5-2) began the season with a series win against California and followed that up with a dominant series sweep over then-No. 20 Wake Forest. 

The way the Dirtbags pulled off that sweep over the Demon Deacons is important as well, as they limited a high-powered offense to five total runs over three days. 

Starting pitching, in particular, was outstanding over the weekend, with each starter putting the Dirtbags in position to win. Sophomore lefthander Alfredo Ruiz threw seven scoreless innings Friday. Freshman righthander Luis Ramirez struck out 12 in seven innings Saturday, allowing just one earned run along the way. And junior righthander Jonathan Lavallee made a spot start in place of ace Adam Seminaris, who will return this weekend, and threw five scoreless innings Sunday.

Sure, Blair Field is one of college baseball’s most famous pitcher’s parks, but Wake Forest’s offensive upside is enormous no matter where it plays. 

“They have a special group of hitters there,” Valenzuela said. “I think we did a really good job of, to be honest, just mixing our pitches. Our guys are trained and are confident to throw any pitch in any count.”

Offensively, the Dirtbags haven’t been explosive, even if they’ve provided more than enough support for a pitching staff that had a 1.75 team ERA coming out of the Wake Forest series. 

Against the Demon Deacons, Valenzuela lauded the team’s ability to avoid having selfish at-bats and the way they put pressure on the defense, which allowed them to take advantage of mistakes. 

“We laid down some really good bunts this weekend,” Valenzuela said. “Some challenge bunts, some drags. We made them play fast catch and they made some mistakes, which cost them some big innings for us.”

You might look at what it did well against Wake Forest and then look at a stat sheet that shows just one home run through two weekends and make assumptions about what the Beach offense aspires to be. On the surface level, it looks like a stereotypical West Coast offense that’s going to try to fight for a couple of runs and win low-scoring games. 

Valenzuela and assistant coach Bryan Peters, who runs the Beach offense, will look to have elements of that type of offense in place. Every team wants to be able to manufacture runs when it needs to, after all. But that’s not all it wants to be. 

“An offense that we want to have and that I feel like is doing a really good job is just one that can beat you in all different angles,” Valenzuela said. “We could bang with guys if we have to. We could execute if we have to. We could steal some bases. We’ll take the next base if it’s given to us. Just putting pressure on a defense is kind of our deal.”

That offensive philosophy tracks well with what Long Beach has often stood for. So many of the program’s great teams from the past played with an edge. If the opposing team gave an inch, the Dirtbags were going to work hard to take a mile. 

That’s exactly the type of attitude that Valenzuela wants this team to have, but that’s not just a matter of a head coach adopting the ethos of a storied program for the sake of carrying on tradition. That’s a function of that being the way Valenzuela’s teams have always played. In other words, playing mean baseball. 

“The brand of Dirtbag and how they play is, I feel like, similar to the type of baseball that we’ve always played,” Valenzuela said of the fit between Dirtbag baseball and his style. “It’s running hard, it’s never die attitude, it’s playing with a chip on your shoulder and playing mean baseball. I think that’s a big part of it, and we talk about that all the time with this group is you’ve got to play mean.

“What does that mean? That just means that we have to have 35 guys that play like football players on the field and that are going to run through a brick wall, that are going to dive everywhere, that are going to run hard through bases, that are going to, when they’re down by two or three late, it doesn’t even matter, they’re going to find a way to win. It feels like a good match.”

Already, last season’s struggles seem like a distant memory, and for a team that features a number of players who took on 41 losses in 2019, that has to feel good. But it’s not as if overcoming last season has been a theme internally. In fact, it hasn’t really come up. 

“We didn’t really talk much about the past, I mean, not at all,” Valenzuela said. “We just kind of moved forward.”

A series at home against No. 4 Mississippi State this weekend looms large. An upset of the Bulldogs, and suddenly, all eyes will be fixed on a bright future nearing closer for the program, with a difficult recent past all but forgotten.