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New-look Cougars ready for ASU

 

Tonya Thuringer of the State Press Junior designated hitter Brendan Hines, who hit two home runs last weekend, and the rest of the Sun Devils will take on BYU today.

By Sam Ganczaruk
State Press

The BYU baseball team comes to town with a new head coach and a new outlook.

This new outlook will face the Sun Devils Thursday afternoon at Packard Stadium at 3 p.m.

The new head coach of the Cougars is one-time Major League Baseball player Vance Law. Law will try and rebuild a program that went 26-31 overall in 1999 and 12-17 in the Mountain West Conference.

"If he coaches the way he played then they are going to be awfully good," Sun Devils head coach Pat Murphy said. "I remember watching him and I loved watching him."

Law's team has been vastly rebuilt from last year, when it was under the control of Gary Pullins. Pullins is now an assistant athletic director at BYU.

"(We are) a strong club that hits the ball well, but we will go as far as our pitchers take us," Law said. "We have a good offensive show and can play sound defense."

The Cougars' strong pitching staff will be anchored by sophomore left-handed pitcher Jeff Stone, who will be sent to the mound to open the 2000 season against the Sun Devils. Stone is pitching for the first time since 1997 because he just returned from his LDS mission. Stone was the Western Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year in '97, going 11-1 with a 6.94 era.

The staring lineup for BYU has four new faces in it, including a Stanford transfer, senior left fielder Nick Day. The Cougars also had junior left-handed pitcher James Ray transfer from Jacksonville University.

The Sun Devils will either send junior left-handed pitcher Drew Friedberg or sophomore right-handed pitcher Angel Ramirez to the mound. Friedberg was 3-1 with a 4.07 era in 1999 while Ramirez is a transfer from Arizona Western College.

Law feels that "his team will force other teams' hand (with) our hit-and-run and stealing, (so) we will play more small ball."

The Sun Devils like to run too, as they showed last weekend. They were a perfect nine-for-nine on the basepaths.

"We did a lot of good things, but we are a long way from being a good ball club," Murphy said. "There were some gains in team concepts (and) continuity, (but) we are always gonna run."

Murphy also said that the pitcher dictates when and how much the Sun Devils will run, but they will test the catcher sometime in the game.

Being perfect on the basepaths is a good thing for the Sun Devils, but that is not the only way they can score runs. ASU hit .377 as a team last weekend, hitting five home runs and scoring 33 runs.

Junior designated hitter Brendan Hines hit two of those five home runs. Junior Casey Myers started at catcher in two of three games. He was not supposed to catch as much this year, making the move to first base DH. But he again showed his ability to call a good game and guided true freshman Mike Esposito to a winning performance with five innings of solid work while only allowing four hits and two earned runs.

Who the DH is will depend on whether the Sun Devils are facing a lefty or a righty. It will also depend on who is on the mound for ASU because Murphy likes Myers' ability to call a good game and keep the younger pitchers calm.

Also bolstering the ASU batting average was Dennis Wyrick, who was 5 for 11 for a .455 average and scored six runs. He made no errors in the field in his first weekend series for ASU.

"The coaching staff and my teammates prepared me for every situation possible," Wyrick said. "I think it was more of getting the nerves out."

Wyrick again intimated that the Sun Devils win and lose as a team.

"Every game we play (to) the fullest of our ability and whatever happens, happens," Wyrick said. "We don't play our opponent. We play the game."

Sam Ganczaruk can be reached by e-mail at stgman@imap3.asu.edu.