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Crack of the Bat Spotlight: Eric Valenzuela Talks Recruiting and Development - USD
Under the guidance of head coach Rich Hill, the San Diego Toreros have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success. Coming off of their second consecutive 40 win seasons (the only two in the program’s history), coupled with a pair of conference championships, as well as eight consecutive 30 win seasons, the program is at an all-time high.
While talent always has a lot to do with any program’s success, much of that talent has been procured with the help of pitching and recruiting coach Eric Valenzuela.
That talent includes Brian Matusz, the fourth overall pick in last year’s draft, as well as All-Americans Josh Romanski and A.J. Griffin. Continued strong recruiting classes the past several years, and another one on the way next season, has put San Diego in position to continue their success.
Valenzuela, who is entering his sixth year with San Diego, was no stranger to success as a player. At Arizona State he got a taste of Omaha in 1998, and after transferring to Pepperdine, he helped the Waves capture the conference crown as a senior captain in 2001.
He employs a tough, no-nonsense approach with his recruits and his players, which isn’t a surprise considering how his father was a boxing coach. Valenzuela talked to me about that approach, what has made San Diego such a successful team over the last decade and some of the things we can expect from the program in the coming years.
PG Crosschecker (PGX): From guiding All-Americans and first-round picks to playing in Omaha with Arizona State and graduating from Pepperdine, what is your proudest moment during your baseball career as both a player and as a coach?
Eric Valenzuela (EV): Winning the WCC championship as a player was great in 2001 at Pepperdine. They (Pepperdine) were already coming off of back-to-back championships, so it was a little different when I came here.
The first year I came here we made it to a regional and won 35 games that year, but the second year (2005) was a rough year for us. But that third year when (Brian) Matusz and (Josh) Romanski were freshman was the turnaround as far as our program’s expectations were concerned. We had two freshmen that pitched in the WCC conference championship and got us to a regional, and they didn’t know any different.
After that, that was expected, whereas before some of the guys just didn’t know how to do it. With that class winning was expected (from the beginning), and that turned things around in a positive way, and the recruiting classes after that have rolled with it . The winning part of it helps the most, but first getting Matusz and Romanski out of high school and then seeing them go high in the draft was a big deal for us.
PGX: Can you expand a little further on how success breeds success in regards to recrtuiting?
EV: Coach Hill really harps on me and Jay (Assistant Coach Jay Johnson) to focus on recruiting and development. That’s the number one thing. We don’t have to deal with the administrative duties like hauling equipment or booking hotel rooms, he takes care of that. It’s great getting guys like Matusz and Romanski here, but the other half of it actually making them better and developing them, and you can obviously use that as a recruiting tool. By taking a chance by coming to school, the injury factor and all that stuff, we have something to point to that players actually get better, and leave here going in a higher round (than where they did coming out of high school).
Matusz was a fourth-rounder out of high school and was the first pitcher taken (in last year’s draft). Romanski was a 15th rounder and went in the fourth round, and (Ricardo) Pecina was undrafted and signed out of the eighth round. They have to come in and we have to develop them so we can put our money where our mouth is.
PGX: How do you balance recruiting for your own program while also trying to determine which players are most likely to bypass professional baseball coming out of high school?
EV: We’re able to relate well to the players. Coach Hill does a great job sitting down with the players during home visits and talking with the players and their families. We need to make sure that their primary goal is college. We also understand we’re going to lose some players to pro ball. We lost a kid last year, Matt Cerda, who was our number one recruit, and he would have been a starter for us as a freshman, When we got him to commit, he was a 5’9” middle infielder, and there was no way he was going to sign a professional contract. He ended up blowing up last spring as a senior and ended up signing for $500,000 with the Cubs. We couldn’t believe it.
We have to have good relationships with the players, and we have to make sure that before we pull the trigger, that college is what they want to do, and that it’s going to take a life-changing opportunity to get them away from here. We do try to get a number and a sense of where the player expects to go in the draft.
The guys we usually get are good students, and education is a priority, otherwise it is a big turn-off for us in the recruiting process. If they aren’t good students, first of all, we can’t even get them in here, so the GPA and SAT scores are important to us. When you come to a college like San Diego that is a great academic institution, you are guaranteed to have success. Even if you suffer a career-threatening injury, you’re still getting a degree from a powerful university. If you sign for $400,000 out of high school, after taxes you get half of that and with $200,000 or so at 18 or 19 years old, you’re not guaranteeing yourself success. When people, and more importantly parents think about that, it’s a whole different tune.
You’re not making a bad decision by coming to school, and that’s what guys like (Kyle) Blair and (Victor) Sanchez understand, and you can’t put a price on that.
PGX: How is your job similar, and different, from being a professional scout?
EV: We need the talent now, especially the pitching. When I’m recruiting a guy, I need to tell myself and go back to Coach Hill and tell him that this pitcher can play at this second, in the WCC, and compete on the weekends. If the answer, “no, but this kid may be able to compete a year or two down the road,” then we don’t go on those guys.
The professional scouts look down the road at high school guys for projection. We can’t look four to five years down the road. Development still plays a part, as we have to take good players and make them very good players, and that’s how they put up the big numbers. We don’t red-shirt guys, we have a 30 man roster; we don’t even have a 35-man roster that everybody else does, so every one of our guys is going to contribute at some point.
PGX: That point is emphasized by the fact that you sent guys like Sanchez and Blair to advanced college summer wood bat leagues before they even step on campus.
EV: We do that with a lot of our guys. It gets them valuable college at-bats and innings. They’re playing against players that are bigger, stronger and more physical, and it’s almost like they have pitched a season before they even get here. For position players, they get a lot of at-bats and a lot of innings playing defense. The confidence level is big, even if they struggle a little bit, they’re still in a better position than a freshman playing in his first game on the opening Friday. We sent Bryan Haar up to Alaska last summer and he did really well. We feel that when Bryan Haar plays his first college game, he already has a 50 to 60 game season under his belt.
Plus, they’re out of their element, being away from home before they come to college, so they grow into men. That has been a very powerful tool for us.
PGX: How have Perfect Game showcase and tournament events helped you do your job?
EV: It helps a lot. Perfect Game and PG Crosschecker do a great job. The information is important, and if you are a good player we know who you are. What it does is it allows us to not have to go see five different team travel teams or six different weekday games; you can catch them all at these showcases. The (Perfect Game) National is an awesome event, and the reports help tremendously. We love the fact that there is BP, infield (etc.), and you get to see these kids play against great competition. Sometimes when you go to a high school game and you watch a good pitcher face a poor team and dominate you don’t always get a good read as to how good they really are.
We also like to see the guys that have already committed to us participate in these events, because it helps them get better.
PGX: Pitching definitely seems to be a priority in recruiting for you and Coach Hill, however you did land one of the countries more talented bats a year ago in Victor Sanchez and have locked up two promising bats in your next recruiting class. Is pitching easier to recruit, so to speak, than hitting?
EV: Coach Hill’s tool for us is to build around the mound. Given the amount of games we’re playing every week, we have to have a lot of depth on the mound. I think we’ve done a good job getting power arms and getting position players that can execute and play good defense, and that is the foundation for our success. Most of our guys offensively can do a lot of things: They can bunt, they can run, they handle the bat really well. On the mound we have to miss bats.
Before I got here, the recruiting class that had Josh Butler and Nate Bowman was very good. Butler was a second-rounder, and Bowman had gotten injured but he still signed with the Angels for $400,000. That started a little trend for us I think. When we were recruiting Brian Matusz we had to prove to him that he was going to get better, and we could point to guys like Josh Butler and Nate Bowman.
Now you get Matusz and you get Romanski and you open some eyes. Everyone in Arizona knows us because we got Matusz. Just getting guys to our campus to visit opens eyes. It’s a beautiful campus, a beautiful facility; on the top of the hill overlooking the ocean. It’s just a beautiful place. Before, we couldn’t get guys to come to our campus to check it out.
I’m not saying it’s easy now, because we still have to work to get guys, but to have guys we can point to that came through and had tremendous success, it gives us the ability to recruit the blue-chip prospects, both pichers and hitters.
PGX: Speaking to your point about bringing in guys and making them better, what are the philosophies you emphasize to your staff?
EV: I’m not a mechanical type of coach. If you’re a guy that we need to break down from zero, you’re probably not good enough to be here. The guys that we have on our pitching staff are well-schooled and have great mechanics already. There are guys we have to tinker with and add a pitch or two. We do video (breakdowns) as well, but we recruit very good pitchers that are mechanically sound.
I come from a boxing background. My dad was a boxer, and I want these guys tough. I want them like animals. Our guys can not only pitch a lot of innings because their bodies are in good shape, but they can also run. My belief is that if you put these guys through strenuous workouts over and over again, like a boxer, like I was raised by my father, things come easier to you as an athlete. You’re mentally tough, you’re strong, and you’re not going to let bad things that happen behind you, an error or whatever, get to you and it’s not going to derail you from your outing.
That’s my number one thing: They’re going to be in great shape, and they’re going to be tough as nails. If they don’t have those two things they’re not going to pitch for us, and I really make that clear coming in.
We have heard that some guys don’t want to come because they want to be part of a more laid-back program where they can go do their thing, and that’s not going to happen here.
When it comes to the pitching side, we use a great long-toss program and our bullpens are very structured. As part of our bullpens, we do something a little different where we back our catchers up to about 75 feet and let our pitchers throw the first half of their bullpens at that distance. Then we’ll bring them up to 60 feet and they’re able to spot up a lot better; their curveballs are sharper and their changeups are better.
Another thing we really harp on is throwing any pitch in any count. We pitch for the strikeout, and they know that from the minute we’re recruiting them. We do not pitch to contact, and that’s probably different than a lot of pitching staffs’ philosophies. We’re not trying to get guys out on one or two pitches. If it happens, great, but we’re going for the strikeout, and that’s just how we do it. We’re taking a risk doing that, since our pitchers can throw a lot of pitches, but since we make it clear from day one it’s in our pitchers heads and they’re able to do it from day one.
That is what made Matusz so successful, because he had a changeup that he could throw (in any count). When he didn’t have to throw a fastball in a fastball count it made him so much better.
PGX: The program has fallen short of making it to Omaha the past few years, with the defending national champions Fresno State having played a large part of that. Having watched them play, especially after they won the College World Series as somewhat of a darkhorse contender, are there any things about the way they play, including intangibles, that you can pick up on a staff to try and help impress onto your players?
EV: They do a great job, and ‘Bates’ (Head Coach Mike Batesole) is a great coach. They do a lot of things well; they really hit the ball and they pitch very well. We played them really well, and Blair beat them 15-1 the day before we were eliminated.
When we had our bar-b-que at Long Beach before the regional, you could tell they came to win. They were a number four seed, but they didn’t act like a number four seed. They were not scared, and you could see it in their eyes and their coaches’ eyes. Everyone called them underdogs, but they were a good team. And the people that had seen them play, especially us since we saw them early in the season as well, knew that. They just turned it up another notch in the end.
I think we were just as talented as they were, so we got to see how close we were to the team that knocked us out and won it all, and that’s how close we are. That gives our guys motivation because they know how close they were. The experience of that regional and that regional final, where we had to beat them and beat them twice is really going to help this program.
PGX: Last year you began the year in the national spotlight, facing crosstown rivals San Diego State with a big matchup between Matusz and Stephen Strasburg. This year you and San Diego State kick off the season against Bethune-Cookman and Southern in the MLB Urban Youth Academy Tournament, with Saturday’s games being televised on the MLB Network. How exciting is it to once again open the season in the national spotlight?
EV: It’s a special event, and we’re very happy to be in it. I know coach Hill and Tony Gwynn really wanted to get into the tournament and wanted to be a part of it. Playing our local rival and having a game on TV is really exciting. It’s going to be a fantastic event; it’s a good program, it’s good for the school and it’s good for recruiting.
PGX: How does your rotation stack up this weekend?
EV: We’re going to go with (Sammy) Solis on Friday, Blair on Saturday and (Matt) Thomson on Sunday.
PGX: What do you see for you team this year?
EV: We see good things. Offensively, I think we’re going to be scrappy team: We’re going to put the ball in play, bunt and cause a lot of havoc (on the basepaths). We’ve got some power with Sanchez and (Jose) Valerio, and freshmen Austin Green and Bryan Haar are going to give us a boost as well.
Overall it’s a team that has been built the same has it has the past couple of years. We’re going to pitch very well. We have good starters and we have a good closer in A.J. Griffin, and we have some depth on the mound even with all of the games we’re playing. We’ll execute and have a little better mix of power and speed. The intra-squad games have been great; the guys are competing and are very excited to get the season going. This is year two of the (universal start date), so we get a lot more practice now and our players are hungry to play.
Patrick Ebert is affiliated with both Perfect Game USA and Brewerfan.net, and can be contacted via email at pebert@brewerfan.net.
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