Baseball aims to recover from last season with returning players’ help

The UCLA baseball team has been like a mass on a swinging pendulum over the past two seasons, swaying in one direction and then another.

There’s been forward progress and a rise to national prominence in 2013, followed by a regression to a sub-.500 record and a fallout into obscurity by the end of 2014. There was an 11-game win streak and a national title to cap off the 2013 season, counter-balanced by a 10-game losing skid and exclusion from the postseason at the end of last season.

And after all that, the Bruins are brought back to an equilibrium point to start the 2015 season, with a 0-0 record that will be pushed in one direction or another starting Friday against the Hofstra Pride.

“I think the biggest thing for this team is … we have those 19 returners (from 2013),” said junior outfielder Ty Moore, a member of that championship-winning team and UCLA’s leading returning hitter. “We’ve had the ups, we’ve had the downs, so I think we know how to find a happy medium and just kind of just control the ups, control the downs, in order to stay at a good pace for the season.”

Control was something that UCLA didn’t always have last year, as the team was hit early and often by the intractable force of injury, leading the Bruins into a tailspin down the stretch.

“The injuries to some of our best players definitely put a dagger in our side,” Moore said. “When guys keep going down, you see them go down, and you’re like, ‘gosh, we have one less guy, and my body doesn’t feel well either, but I gotta suck it up to kinda pick up the workload for them.'”

Before the season even started, UCLA lost two of its top hitters and a relief pitcher to season-ending injuries. Then during the season, more injuries continued to repress the Bruins’ chances for progress, as third baseman Chris Keck suffered a season-ending injury in April, while three other key contributors missed significant time.

“We never had the team that we drew up (before the season) on the field,” said coach John Savage after last season.

But this year, all but two of those injured players are back, making UCLA look a lot more like the team that entered last year ranked No. 12 in the country. Couple those returning players with a 2014 recruiting class that was ranked No. 7 in the nation by Baseball America, and UCLA begins this year ranked No. 9 in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll.

“I think talent-wise, there are no better players on that ’13 team than there are here (in 2015),” Moore said.

One thing that could swing the momentum back in the Bruins’ favor this year is the swinging of the bats. Last year, with one of the team’s projected top hitters – shortstop Kevin Kramer – sidelined all year due to a shoulder injury, the Bruins struggled mightily to produce runs. UCLA finished the year ranked No. 285 in the country in scoring, averaging just 3.6 runs per contest. But with the redshirt junior Kramer back from injury, and the NCAA implementing new flat-seam baseballs to boost offenses, the Bruins seem poised for an offensive resurgence in 2015.

“There will definitely be more pop in the bats this year,” Moore said. “Especially with the change in the baseball … the ball seems to be kind of jumping off the bat a little bit harder.”

But regardless of what type of baseball is being used, Moore and Savage said that UCLA’s philosophy will remain the same as it has over the years, relying on pitching and defense rather than power hitting.

And while the new baseballs may be considered a force working against UCLA’s strategy, the Bruins’ No. 1 pitcher and the Pac-12’s reigning strikeout leader has no problem with them.

“I like the seams personally, I think it’s better and kind of makes everything a little more tighter pitch wise,” said junior pitcher James Kaprielian.