Four-time defending conference champions rarely fly under the radar.
In 2010, the ASU baseball team won the Pac-10 by two games over UCLA.
However, with a new season now just hours away, the Sun Devils enter their 2011 campaign in a new role.
The Pac-10 coaches picked not only the Bruins, who did finish last year as the national runner-up, but also Stanford to finish ahead of ASU.
The Cardinal finished 31-25 last season and lost in its regional while the Sun Devils advanced all the way to the College World Series before bowing out.
“It kind of gives us a chip on our shoulder because we’ve won it four years in a row and then all of the sudden they’re just kind of throwing that in the past,” sophomore pitcher Brady Rodgers said. “But I try not to look at that, it’s just people’s opinions. My opinion is that we’re the best in the Pac.”
Both last year and in 2009, the coaches voted ASU as the favorite.
“People can write what they want to write but we feel that we’re the top team in the Pac-10,” junior third baseman Riccio Torrez said. “We feel that everyone is going to be gunning for us. We’re the defending champs.”
Rodgers and Torrez’s sentiments are shared among their teammates.
The Sun Devils are a confident group who believe in what they do and in the pedigree of the program.
“We’ve always been well-rounded; it’s been defense, pitching, hitting and being good at all the small things,” Torrez said. “Winning is the biggest thing though. There’s always the Sun Devil tradition and we just try to keep that going.”
The way ASU has been so successful over the years is by not being overloaded in any one aspect of the game.
Some teams rely on the long ball while others need their starters to pitch shutdown baseball night in and night out.
The Sun Devils, on the other hand, have always been rock solid at everything.
“Our whole goal is not to be one-dimensional,” ASU coach Tim Esmay said. “We can’t afford to let someone have a scouting report on us and pitch us or play us accordingly and we just go out and say, ‘It wasn’t our day.’ We have to have the ability to adjust in games and take what the other team is giving us.
“We have a good mix of runners, we have a good mix of guys that are going to hit for average and we can play some small ball. Our pitching is kind of the same way, we have guys that have power arms and we have guys that pitch a little bit backwards.”
By being able to play multiple styles, ASU can matchup well against most anybody in the country over a given weekend.
Settling in
2011 will mark the second year for Esmay at the helm of the program.
He’s used experiences learned from past coaches to help continue the tradition built in Tempe.
“My years at Utah really helped me prepare myself and obviously my years here and being around this program as long as I have has really helped me,” Esmay said. “I was very fortunate to be around guys like Jim Brock, Jeff Pentland and Pat Murphy. I’ve learned a lot. “
Esmay was the Pac-10 Coach of the Year a season ago.
Reach the reporter at tyler.emerick@asu.edu
