IRVINE, Calif. – UC Santa Barbara has been picked by league head coaches to finish atop The Big West baseball race for the second year in a row, as the conference released its 2023 preseason poll and first-ever baseball preseason team on Friday. 

The Gauchos earned eight of the 11 first-place votes to total 96 points. UC Irvine, the 2021 champion, is second with 84 points. Long Beach State (79 points) and 2022 runner-up Cal Poly (71) are third and fourth, respectively, with the Beach garnering a first-place nod. Cal State Fullerton (68) and Hawai’i (66) follow closely, each snagging one of the remaining first-place votes. CSUN (45) and UC San Diego (33) take up the seventh and eighth positions. The poll is rounded out by UC Davis (28), CSU Bakersfield (23) and UC Riverside (12). 

Four squads placed two student-athletes each on the 11-member inaugural Big West preseason coaches’ team, with seven programs represented and all 11 standouts hailing from California. UCSB’s junior left-handed starter Mike Gutierrez and redshirt senior outfielder Broc Mortensen were joined by junior catcher Connor Burns and third-year sophomore corner infielder Jonathon Long of LBSU. Also making the cut was the Mustang tandem of true sophomore catcher Ryan Stafford and junior first baseman Joe Yorke, and the junior Matador duo of right-handed starter Lucas Braun and outfielder Andrew Sojka. The last three spots went to junior UCI outfielder Caden Kendle, senior UC San Diego third baseman Jalen Smith, and UC Davis centerfielder Mark Wolbert, the 2022 Big West Freshman Field Player of the Year. 

UC Santa Barbara, which has won four Big West titles in all and two of the last three under 12th-year head coach Andrew Checketts, went 44-14 overall a season ago and a dominant 27-3 in The Big West, a full five games better than Cal Poly. Not only did the Gauchos take all 10 league sets with seven sweeps, they didn’t drop a single non-conference series of more than two games. UCSB went 1-2 at the NCAA Championship’s Stanford Regional with a 9-4 victory over Binghamton in between defeats to Texas State and the host Cardinal. Checketts was voted by peers as The Big West Coach of the Year for a second time. 

In addition to Gutierrez, Mortensen and All-Big West First Team outfielder Christian Kirtley, UCSB returns 2022 Big West Freshman Pitcher of the Year Ryan Gallagher and fellow Freshman All-American, second-team All-Big West pick and right-hander Matt Ager. Another Gaucho arm back is redshirt junior southpaw Carter Benbrook, who had a stellar 2021 out of the bullpen and garnered preseason All-America recognition prior to 2022, only to miss the entire campaign due to injury. Benbrook, Gallagher and Gutierrez have all been named preseason All-Americans by at least one publication, while incoming right-hander and San Diego product Tyler Bremner is D1Baseball’s Big West Freshman of the Year in its preview coverage. 

UC Irvine lost two of its three All-Big West first-teamers from 2022 in relief ace Gordon Ingebritson and slugger Justin Torres. Kendle is back, however, alongside redshirt junior southpaw and Friday starter Nick Pinto, who gained All-Big West honorable mention after a second-team nod in 2021, as well as reliever Jacob King, a 2021 first-team pick. That group is accompanied by infield regulars Dub Gleed and Woody Hadeen. The Anteaters are just a year removed from lifting the league trophy in 2021 when they compiled a 32-8 ledger. Ben Orloff, the 2021 Big West Coach of the Year and a member of the UCI Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2023, enters a fifth season in charge at the alma mater. 

Fourth-year head coach Eric Valenzuela’s Long Beach State ended an up-and-down 2022 on a major high with five consecutive Big West series wins and midweek home victories over UCLA and USC. Star backstop Burns was the 2022 Big West Defensive Player of the Year and an ABCA Gold Glove finalist. LBSU lost some talent to the transfer portal, but also gained big pieces from it with the likes of Joey Walls Jr., a power-hitting outfielder who banged out 35 extra-base hits, including eight home runs and a nation-leading 26 doubles, at UNLV a season ago. The Beach also got All-Big West Second Team second baseman Nick Marinconz from Cal Poly, and still have All-Big West honorable mention utility Rocco Peppi returning to the top of the order. 

Larry Lee, the league’s longest-tenured head coach in a 21st season at Cal Poly, has the obvious-if-not-simple task of replacing his all-everything shortstop son, Brooks Lee, the two-time Big West Field Player of the Year, consensus All-American and No. 8 overall selection of the 2022 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft who has already been invited to big-league Spring Training with the Minnesota Twins later this month. The Mustangs also lost their ace in Drew Thorpe, the 2022 Big West Pitcher of the Year and unanimous first-team All-American, to the professional ranks as well. Along with Stafford and Yorke, Cal Poly returns 6-foot-8 Bryce Warrecker, the prestigious Cape Cod League’s Outstanding Pitcher this summer, and fellow junior right-hander Derek True, who opted not to sign after getting drafted. 

Cal State Fullerton looks primed and ready to return to its perennially-contending ways under second-year head coach Jason Dietrich. Hawai’i is also set for a second go-around under its head coach, Rich Hill, the Rainbow Warriors having placed a surprising third last season after being picked sixth in the preseason. CSUN features the lone first-year skipper in the conference in Eddie Cornejo, who takes over for the retired longtime college baseball leader, Dave Serrano. 

Ten of the 11 preseason honorees were 2022 All-Big West performers, with Kendle, Sojka, Stafford, Wolbert and Yorke on the first team, Braun, Gutierrez, Mortensen and Smith on the second, and Long with the honorable mention nod. Mortensen and Smith also made the 2021 All-Big West Second Team, with the latter standout at UC Davis at the time. Stafford and Wolbert were both 2022 Freshman All-Americans. 

The 2023 college baseball season begins exactly one week from today, with all 11 Big West programs taking the diamond. Eight teams are at home, with the other three scattered across Arizona. The most notable matchup is arguably Cal State Fullerton once again opening its campaign with Stanford, ranked No. 3 by D1Baseball as a back-to-back Men’s College World Series participant. First pitch at Goodwin Field for the first of three is scheduled for 6 p.m. on ESPN+. 

Cal Poly and Hawai’i also each play host to 2022 NCAA qualifiers in Missouri State and Wright State, respectively. The Mustangs have three with the Bears at Baggett Stadium, and the Rainbow Warriors await a four-gamer with the Raiders inside Les Murakami Stadium. 

UC San Diego embarks on its third Big West season at the MLB Desert Invitational in the Greater Phoenix area, opening against Grand Canyon inside Salt River Fields at Talking Stick on Friday, Feb. 17, in a contest slated for a first pitch of 12 p.m. PT (1 p.m. MT) in front of a national television audience on MLB Network and streamed on MLB.com. The Tritons will therefore be the first Big West team in action in 2023, and round out the MLB-hosted event against powerhouses Michigan, No. 2 Tennessee and Arizona. All four made the NCAA field in 2022. 

The 2023 Big West conference schedule consists of a 30-game slate, with each side facing all 10 opponents in three-game sets starting Friday, March 17. Check listings to see which contests air on ESPN+. 

The Big West regular-season champion will earn the league’s automatic berth again this year into the 64-team NCAA Division I Baseball Championship. The 2023 MCWS remains at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Neb., June 16-26. Ole Miss is the defending national champion.