How many Pac-10 Players of the Year do you see?
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

We are in the calm after the baseball regular season and before the NCAA tournament begins. It’s the time when the Pac-10 announces its awards and fans around the conference say…

Who?!

The Pac-10 coaches voted and Cal’s Tony Renda was named Player of the Year.

Yeah, I had to look him up too.

You have to search long and hard to find him on the conference top 10 lists. 8th in batting average, 4th in hits, 8th in total bases. But, hey, he was 3rd in at-bats. And he did lead his team to a 6th place finish.

When’s the last time the Player of the Year didn’t finish in the top 10 in either on base percentage or slugging percentage? Or home runs, RBIs and runs?

I thought the award was going to go to ASU’s Joey DeMichele who led the league in batting average, slugging percentage and triples. Or how about WSU’s Taylor Ard who topped the conference in home runs, RBIs and total bases?

You could also make a case for a pair of Arizona Wildcats. Cole Frenzel was 1st in on base percentage and top five in average, slugging, runs, hits, RBIs and walks. Robert Refsnyder tied DeMichele for the triples lead, tied Ard for the total bases lead and was 2nd in RBIs.

Pac-10 Pitcher of the Year, on the other hand, was the easiest vote you’ll ever see in sports. UCLA’s Trevor Bauer led the league in every stat that means anything to a starting pitcher.

It gets better. UCLA hasn’t used a reliever in a game started by Bauer since April 2. In Pac-10 play the Bruin bullpen threw a total of two innings behind the junior right-hander. If this were the Major Leagues, Bauer would have won both the Cy Young and MVP.

Coach of the Year went to Oregon State’s Pat Casey, which means they voted before the final weekend. If Sean Miller won the award for taking a “one-man team” to the conference title then UCLA’s John Savage deserves it for taking a “two-man team” to the top.

The 25-man All-Conference Team featured a league-high six Wildcats: junior Kyle Simon and sophomores Frenzel, Refsnyder, Kurt Heyer, Alex Mejia and Joey Rickard. The UA looks to have plenty of guys back to compete for next year’s Pac-10 awards.

- – -

Here is how the Pac-10 regular season said goodbye:

ARIZONA won all three vs. Washington.
Scores: 9-0, 6-5, 8-2
Word of advice to the Cats: Don’t blow any four-run 9th-inning leads in College Station.

UCLA won two of three at ASU.
Scores: 10-3, 7-0, 5-10
Those first two games earned the Bruins a regional and kept Arizona State from securing a national seed.

Oregon won all three vs. OSU.
Scores: 4-1, 4-1, 6-0
The Ducks went 10-3-1 (gotta include the tie) down the stretch but it was too little, too late to make the Big Baseball Dance.

Speaking of too little, the Beavers’ two total runs in their final series aren’t going to strike fear in the hearts of anybody traveling to the Corvallis regional.

Stanford won both at Cal.
Scores: 3-2, 4-2
I’m sure Oregon would love to play Cal heads-up for their tournament bid right now.

WSU won two of three at USC.
Scores: 2-6, 10-2, 13-1
I know the Cougars wish their two-game winning streak carried over to next year.

- – -

Now stacking them up one last time:

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
PER = Perfect Game (no poll this week)
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll

ASU will go into the tournament as the highest-ranked Pac-10 team. I’m sure the Bruins were too busy getting sized for rings to notice.

Come back Friday when we preview the Cats’ trip to the College Station regional along with the rest of the Pac-10 postseason action!

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Scott Terrell is a writer. Who?! Find out on Twitter and Facebook.

Stanford’s Mark Appel contributed to Arizona’s fruitless trip.
Photo by Crystal Ochoa/The Arizona Republic

When they say baseball is a funny game they’re talking about series like this past weekend for the Arizona Wildcats.

Kurt Heyer threw nine shutout innings on Friday night, and his team lost.

The UA outscored a Pac-10 opponent over the three games but lost twice. And it’s the second time that’s happened this year.

That’s baseball.

The Cats weren’t favored to win at Stanford so it wasn’t a shock they lost two of three. But it’s frustrating to leave town knowing you were just a couple hits away from sweeping the series.

Kurt Heyer was absolutely dominant in the series opener but his teammates couldn’t push anything across against two Stanford pitchers in a very rare 1-0, 11-inning game.

Kyle Simon wasn’t quite as good but he got the run support and the 7-3 victory, his team-leading 10th win of the year.

Konner Wade had the best performance of his young career with 6.1 shutout innings only to face the same fate as Heyer in a 2-1 loss.

All told K Cubed combined for a 1.19 ERA over 22.2 innings with 16 strikeouts and a single base on balls. You don’t get much better than that. Except for the winning part.

Arizona’s last four losses have come by one run. Is that good news or bad news?

It leaves the BatCats somewhere between good and bad, 12-12 in conference play, stuck in a three-way tie for 5th place. You don’t get much more mediocre than that.

Elsewhere…

USC won two of three at OSU.
Scores: 2-7, 8-3, 4-3
Didn’t see that one coming. The Trojans have now won five of their last six series. They will argue with Georgia about who is the best team not in the NCAA tournament. The Beavers picked a bad time to drop their first Pac-10 series of the year. But it didn’t cost them everything because…

ASU won two of three at Washington.
Scores: 6-0, 12-0, 0-3
The one loss on Sunday kept the Sun Devils out of 1st place. They have company because…

UCLA won two of three vs. Cal.
Scores: 0-4, 2-1, 5-2.
The Bruins couldn’t get all three either. It sets up a huge battle in Tempe this upcoming weekend with the winner hoping for Beaver defeats.

WSU won two of three vs. Oregon.
Scores: 12-6, 3-6, 8-7
Don’t look now but the Cougars have won three of their last four. Actually, go ahead and look because the Ducks and Portland Pilots aren’t very good.

- – -

What did the pollsters think of OSU losing and UCLA winning?

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
PER = Perfect Game
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll

ASU closed the poll gap on Oregon State and everybody likes the Bruins again. Stanford took Arizona’s place in one poll and the Cats slid down into 6th place in the Pac average rankings.

Joey Rickard and Cole Frenzel lost a lot of ground in the Pac-10 batting race and it’s not a coincidence the team struggled to score runs. Add in Bryce Ortega and the top three hitters in the UA lineup went a combined 4-for-34 (.117) against the Cardinal.

The good news on the stat front is Josh Garcia got a couple starts and hit his team-leading 7th home run of the year, just one behind the Pac-10 co-leaders, Taylor Ard and Derek Jones of WSU. What makes it even more impressive is Ard and Jones have each started 50 games while Garcia has only started 32.

Extra batting practice for everybody!

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Scott Terrell thinks it’s hard to win when you don’t score. Look for more complex math on Twitter and Facebook.

Joey Rickard has been sliding in the Pac-10 batting race.
Photo by Crystal Ochoa/The Arizona Republic

It wasn’t a surprise that the Arizona Wildcats baseball team swept Alcorn State. It wasn’t a surprise that none of the three games were close.

It was a surprise who contributed.

‘Tis a tale as old as sport. A lightly-used player finally gets his opportunity and makes this most of it.

Sport, meet Bobby Rinard.

The senior outfielder from Indiana by way of Yavapai Community College had started just two games all season. He got the call only because Bobby Brown was hurt, who had only been playing because Steve Selsky was hurt.

Rinard took the three weekend starts and went 8-for-12 (.667) at the plate with two doubles, three RBIs, five runs scored and a stolen base.

“Rinard’s done a good job,” UA coach Andy Lopez said. “I’m really happy with him. Good to see a guy who doesn’t play a lot get a chance and – boom – jump right in and take advantage of it.”

The right-handed hitter almost doubled his season at-bat total and bumped his batting average up to an even .500 for the year.

“You can’t really take time off in practice,” Rinard said. “You’ve got to prepare yourself like you’re going to (get a shot) and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

Here are the other weekend shots from around the Pac-10:

OSU won two of three vs. Cal.
Scores: 3-0, 2-6, 4-2
The Beavers had to play a doubleheader on Saturday and ended up with a split. Oregon State’s lead over ASU is now down to a single game.

UCLA won all three at Oregon.
Scores: 7-1, 3-1, 4-0
The Bruins’ pitchers dominated to solidify their hold on 3rd place.

Stanford won all three vs. Washington.
Scores: 6-2, 8-7, 7-2
Mission accomplished for the up-and-down Cardinal who have now matched Arizona’s 9-9 Pac-10 record.

ARIZONA won all three vs. Alcorn State.
Scores: 10-2, 8-2, 15-2
The Braves were held to just a safety in each game.

ASU won all three vs. Long Beach State.
Scores: 6-3, 9-2, 17-9
It was no day at the beach for the Dirtbags.

WSU lost two of three vs. UNLV.
Scores: 1-4, 4-3, 3-6
The Cougars couldn’t maintain the momentum following their 9th-place showdown with Washington.

USC didn’t lose.
Sometimes the only way to win is to not play.

- – -

What this week’s polls think of the Pac-10:

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
PER = Perfect Game
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll

The Beavers moved up in one poll to #2, and down in another poll to #10. NCBW has six Pac-10 teams ranked; Perfect Game (the poll formerly known as Rivals) only has two. I have no idea either.

I do know a batting race when I see one. Arizona’s Joey Rickard had been leading the league in hitting for most of the year but Pac-10 pitching has been eroding his lofty average.

The Wildcat leadoff man was passed over the weekend by another Joey. ASU’s DeMichele (pronounced “DeMichael”) torched LBSU with a 9-for-14 (.643) showing including going 5-for-5 Saturday night. The top Sun Devil’s season average is now .406 while Rickard’s has dropped to .390.

Cats and Devils make up 7 of the 10 leading hitters in the Pac-10 with the UA’s Cole Frenzel (.379) 3rd, Bryce Ortega (.355) 6th and Robert Refsnyder (.344) 8th, while ASU’s Austin Barnes (.362) is 5th and Deven Marrero (.340) is 9th.

It’s 8 of 10 if you include Bobby Rinard.

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Scott Terrell believes he hit a solid .328 with this article. Barrel up on Twitter and Facebook.

The Ducks are swinging for their first Pac-10 win vs. U-Dub.
Photo by Crystal Ochoa/The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Wildcats baseball team wasn’t expecting to be sitting in 6th place at this point, but that’s life when you play in a conference with six ranked teams.

The best remedy is to beat one of them and the Cats have another chance at home.

Elsewhere in the Pac-10, none of the tri-leaders play each other this weekend but one of the teams tied for 4th looks to make a move.

It’s another fun-filled three days with a full slate of five Pac-10 series. The matchups look like this (with each team’s average ranking in the five polls):

#16.6 Cal (19-7 / 5-1) at #21.2 ARIZONA (20-10 / 2-4)
The Bears are playing very well, winning 13 of their last 16, but this will be their first true road series of the year.

#5.6 ASU (22-6 / 5-1) at #20.6 OSU (21-7 / 2-1)
The Devils leave town for their first conference road games. If someone else is going to win this league they need to be rooting for the Beavers.

#15.8 Stanford (14-7 / 2-1) at USC (11-18 / 2-4)
Stanford is starting Pac-10 play with two straight road series. If they get through this weekend they could get into the championship discussion in a hurry.

#20.8 UCLA (14-10 / 5-1) at WSU (12-12 / 1-5)
The Bruins gave up six total runs in their sweep last week. If Wazzu gets to three at any point they should stop the game and celebrate.

Washington (7-19 / 0-3) at Oregon (14-12 / 0-3)
Somebody’s going to get their first Pac-10 win! Don’t be surprised if the Ducks take all three. UW looks like this year’s ASU Basketball.

- – -

So the year-away Wildcats aren’t going to shock the conference and win Andy Lopez’s first Pac-10 title. It’s time to focus on the smaller goal of winning a home series against a good team.

Cal is second in the Pac-10 in team ERA and in this conference that’s saying something. All three of the Bears’ starters – Erik Johnson, Justin Jones and Dixon Anderson – have at least three wins with a sub-3 ERA.

The Cats counter with the best hitting team in the league. Joey Rickard continues to lead the Pac-10 in batting average while Cole Frenzel and Bryce Ortega are 3rd and 4th.

Lots of baseball left to be played. This weekend’s games start at 6 p.m. tonight and tomorrow, and 12 noon on Sunday.

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Scott Terrell thinks it’s too soon to go to the bullpen. Wind up on Twitter and Facebook.

Cole Frenzel wasn’t feeling like dancing against ASU.
Photo by Michael Chow/The Arizona Republic

It started out so well for the Arizona Wildcats.

Isn’t that what we said last week? Unfortunately, yes.

After starting the season 17-5 the UA has lost three straight and five of eight, including a home loss to Arizona State. It’s enough to make a team ready to fight and that’s almost what happened after both benches cleared Tuesday night.

ASU appeared to be coasting with a 6-1 lead in the 4th inning when Cole Frenzel was hit in the back with a first-pitch fastball. Frenzel had been hit in the helmet his previous time up and exchanged words with Sun Devil pitcher Kyle Ottoson and second baseman Zack MacPhee.

Both benches cleared but the umpires and coaches maintained order with only Arizona’s bullpen catcher, TC Mark, getting ejected (a strange way for the freshman to get into his first boxscore).

The game resumed, ASU center fielder Andy Workman made a diving catch to snuff out the UA rally, and ASU cruised to a 10-5 victory. With the win the Devils clinched the season series for the third consecutive year.

The bigger issue is the Wildcats lost two of three at home to Oregon State over the weekend to fall to 2-4 in Pac-10 play. For the second straight series Kurt Heyer was magnificent Friday night only to see the team falter in the next two games.

The sophomore K-maker threw his first complete game of the season in an 18-0 shellacking of the Beavers. With Heyer’s pitch-count rising coach Andy Lopez considered pulling him after the 8th inning but Heyer was able to talk him out of it.

“He sensed that I wanted it very badly,” the righthander said Friday night. “He gave that last inning to me and I got that last zero. It felt great.”

The good feeling didn’t last long as starting pitchers Kyle Simon and Tyler Hale weren’t able to match Heyer’s performance and the UA hitters couldn’t come close to duplicating the offensive outburst as OSU took the series with 10-4 and 8-4 wins.

Lopez is mostly concerned with his slumping pitchers. “My whole career has been based off of two real basic things,” he said after the ASU game. “You gotta pitch and play defense, and we’re not pitching in a couple situations and it’s costing us right now.”

The Arizona coach indicated he’s going to reconsider how he’s using his bullpen arms. He said, “Right now we’ve got a couple guys that don’t throw enough strikes to be pitching at this level.”

It won’t be a difficult decision on Friday at 6 p.m. when Kurt Heyer gets the ball again as the Cal Bears come to town for another Pac-10 series.

Here are the rest of the results from around the conference last weekend:

ASU won all three vs. Oregon.
Scores: 5-2, 3-1, 8-0
The Ducks are the worst hitting team in the Pac-10 and no amount of uniform combinations is going to change that.

Cal won two of three vs. USC.
Scores: 6-10, 9-2, 9-6
Cal sits in a 1st place tie but the Bears’ schedule is backloaded with the league’s top teams.

UCLA won all three vs. Washington.
Scores: 2-1, 5-3, 3-2
The Pac-10’s third 1st place team is the second-worst hitting team in the conference, but you only have to score one more than the other guys.

Stanford won two of three at WSU.
Scores: 8-10, 22-3, 4-3
The Cougars started strong with an 8-run 8th to take the first game but the Cardinal bounced back to win the road series.

Those games brought about these rankings:

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
PER = Perfect Game
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll

Oregon State’s road series win propelled the Beavers over both Arizona and UCLA in the rankings. Oregon’s oh-fer convinced that final poll to exclude the Ducks.

A word of advice if you’re coming to Frank Sancet Stadium to see Kurt Heyer and the Cats: Get to the park early and don’t dilly-dally with your Dippin’ Dots. The umps make sure that first pitch is in the air right on time if not a couple minutes early.

It’s up to the Wildcats to make that pitch a strike.

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Scott Terrell didn’t think to get ejected when he was a bullpen catcher. Charge the mound on Twitter and Facebook.

The Arizona State Sun Devils scored the final seven runs of the game to turn a close contest in a 12-4 blowout victory over Arizona on Saturday night in Tucson.

ASU scored in six consecutive innings, putting up multiple runs in five of the frames. “It got away from us,” Wildcat coach Andy Lopez said. “It turned a pretty good ballgame into a slugfest and that’s not good.”

The game changed in the top of the 6th inning when Arizona ace Kurt Heyer walked his second batter of the inning with two outs. Heyer was lifted in favor of left-hander Bryce Bandilla who promptly gave up a two-run double to Austin Barnes.

“That was a back-breaker,” Lopez said.

The Cats kept it close for five innings. Rafael Valenzuela brought the home team within one when he smacked his fourth home run of the season to right-center field. Later in the inning Steve Selsky tripled and Cole Frenzel walked to put runners on the corners but ASU starter Seth Blair struck out Robert Refsnyder on a pitch in the dirt to end the rally.

The Devils responded with the big two-out hit in the 6th inning and their lead wasn’t threatened again.

“We needed a little bit of a performance out of our pen and we didn’t get it,” Lopez said. “We paid for it tonight.”

Game two of the series is 6 p.m. on Sunday. Arizona’s Kyle Simon (7-4) will face ASU’s Merrill Kelly (9-0) on the mound.

So far this academic year we’ve seen Mike Stoops and the Arizona football team end a seven-game losing streak to USC, and Sean Miller and UA basketball steal a game from USC thanks to a foul and three free throws with two-tenths of a second left.

USC got a little bit of revenge on the baseball field.

As feared Arizona did not respond well to another road trip and as a result the last-place Trojans won their first Pac-10 series of the year.

It was the same problem as against UCLA. The Cat bats have stopped hitting. The team’s bread-and-butter has gone stale. Here’s a look at how the top four hitters in the UA lineup have fared the last few weeks:

	Games	Rickard	Valenzuela	Bandy	Selsky
4/9 – 4/18	7	.241	.448	.360	.429
4/19 – 5/2	7	.179	.207	.192	.231

It’s not a surprise the team won six of the first group of seven games but only three of the last seven.

Joey Rickard’s slump actually extends back another weekend when he went 1-for-11 at Cal, bringing his slide to 13-for-68 (.191) in his last 17 games. It’s really hard when the guy who comes up more than anyone isn’t getting on base.

What can you do about it? There are three options: 1) Do nothing and hope things turn around, 2) Play the same guys but juggle the lineup, or 3) See what you’ve got on the bench.

Option 3 may be what’s in store as freshman Cole Frenzel got three starts and picked up five hits over the weekend. You also saw Andy Lopez bringing in pinch-hitters for Rickard and Valenzuela as the Cats tried to come from behind on Sunday, and the moves paid off as Josh Garcia had the huge hit to tie the game in the 8th.

Another interesting development has been the rollercoaster that is Bryce “The Thrilla” Bandilla’s season. He began the season as the designated closer but blew his first save opportunity. He had a couple good middle relief outings and got moved into the starting rotation. He had one good start mixed in with five bad ones and got moved back out of the rotation. Now he’s an ironman reliever, having appeared in seven of the UA’s last eight games, picking up two wins with three times as many strikeouts as walks.

Here’s how Bandilla the starter compares with Bandilla of the bullpen:

"Please don't make me start again."
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

	ERA	Walks	Strikeouts
Starter	5.81	16	17
Reliever	3.34	8	36

I think it’s safe to say he’s going to stay put.

Just like last week you have the give the team credit for coming back to win the third game after losing the series by Saturday. There’s a big difference – in the standings as well as in perception – between losing two out of three and getting swept. Ask UCLA and Stanford how hard it can be to avoid a third straight loss.

But credit only gets you so far before you have to start making payments with actual wins. How much did losing this series hurt? Entering this week the Cats had a top-15 RPI and were projected as a 2-seed, the equivalent of a 5-to-8-seed in basketball.

Now Arizona will take a tumble in the rankings and RPI and the team will slide closer to the bubble. It means there’s pressure to sweep the Cal State Bakersfield series. It means the ASU game on Tuesday is no longer a nothing-to-lose affair.

Dropping a pair in L.A. was definitely a step back, but an opportunity for instant redemption awaits. The best way to make up for losing to the worst team in the conference is by beating the undisputed best team in the conference.

Especially when you’ve already beaten them once.