After facing an early 3-1 deficit, No. 24 UCLA baseball (20-5, 8-2 Big Ten) defeated Purdue (20-5, 3-4) by a score of 8-5, surpassing last season’s win total of 19 with its 12th comeback victory of the campaign. Assistant Sports editor Kai Dizon shares five takeaways from the Bruins’ first 25 games of 2025.

Top of the order

As the Bruins’ everyday leadoff man, sophomore left fielder Dean West’s job is to get on base.

While his .241 batting average may leave something to be desired, it makes his .436 OBP all the more impressive. West’s 24 walks are tied for fourth in the Big Ten this season, while his 1.71 BB/K ratio sits at 10th.

Simply put, West is often on base for UCLA’s two most potent hitters – sophomore duo shortstop Roch Cholowsky and first baseman Mulivai Levu.

Cholowsky – a top-10 collegiate player in the 2026 MLB Draft, according to Baseball America – leads the Bruins with his 1.175 OPS and 163 wRC+, marks that tie for ninth and eighth in the Big Ten, respectively. Possibly more impressive, however, is that Cholowsky is walking 18.3% of the time – nearly doubling his 10.2% mark he posted as a freshman.

Meanwhile, Levu has improved upon his below-average 91 wRC+ from 2024 with a 114 mark in 2025. The first baseman’s slash line of .317/.385/.594 is up across the board when looking at his freshman tallies of .291/.355/.455. Levu has also dramatically cut down on his strikeout rate, going from 27.3% last season to 19.7% this year.

PB & AJ

However, the Bruins’ offense is far from a three-man show.

In his first season as an everyday player, redshirt sophomore center fielder Payton Brennan’s 2025 campaign has all the makings of a breakout year. Like Levu, Brennan has cut his strikeout rate from a horrendous 32.1% in 2024 to 20.2% in 2025, with his wRC+ jumping 39 points to 112.

Brennan’s slugging percentage has also taken a noticeable jump from .383 last season to .534 this year as the redshirt sophomore has already slugged a career-high three long balls.

Often playing defense to Brennan’s left is redshirt senior AJ Salgado. At the end of the 2024 season, coach John Savage said the right fielder may hear his name called come the 2024 MLB Draft. And while he went undrafted, Salgado is back at UCLA, compiling his best season yet.

Salgado’s walk rate has improved from 7.4% in 2024 to 12.6% in 2025, and his OBP has climbed to .411 this season. The redshirt senior had a respectable .422 slugging percentage as a redshirt junior, but he’s added 173 points to it after clobbering a career-high five homers through 79 at-bats this season for a 124 wRC+ on the year.

Sophomore surge

While injuries and a lack of depth on the mound may have forced many into the spotlight before they were ready, UCLA freshmen posted a 7.03 ERA and 1.71 WHIP in 2024 while pitching 35.9% of the team’s innings.

In 2025, that same class – now sophomores – boast a combined 3.12 ERA and 1.34 WHIP while still tossing 30.2% of the Bruins’ frames.

Right-hander Landon Stump retained his role as the Sunday starter and has lowered his ERA from 6.80 last season to 4.05 this year. The underlying numbers seem to back up Stump’s improvement as his FIP has jumped from 5.12 last season to 4.06 this year.

And if results are the only thing that matter, UCLA is undefeated in Stump’s six starts.

Justin Lee, also a right-hander, was a mop-up guy and middle relief option during his freshman campaign but is serving as the Bruins’ closer in 2025. Batters are hitting just .184 against Lee this season, and the right-hander is stranding 93% of runners on base – compared to just 58.8% last year. Lee’s marked improvement has led to a 2.63 ERA, a significantly better tally than the 7.55 he posted a year ago.

Fellow right-hander Luke Rodriguez has also shown improvement on the bump. His HR/9 is down to 0.44 in 2025 compared to 1.74 in 2024, and batters are hitting just .194 against him. The sophomore is stranding 85.9% of runners on base, and his ERA has dropped from 5.92 to 2.21.

And if that wasn’t enough, the Bruins appear to have a pair of freshmen waiting in the wings to take on a bigger role.

Right-hander Wylan Moss – who’s filled swingman duties this year – has the second-best FIP in the Big Ten at 2.27 across 23.1 innings, while Savage said right-hander Easton Hawk showed off a 98-mile-per-hour fastball in his collegiate debut Tuesday.

Barnett back on the bump

After starting the year in the bullpen, junior right-hander Michael Barnett was back in the weekend rotation March 15.

On March 22, Barnett delivered UCLA’s best start of the season – striking out a career-high 10 batters across seven innings, where he didn’t surrender a single earned run.

But Barnett’s success hasn’t been limited to a singular performance.

Between his sophomore and junior campaigns, Barnett has nearly doubled his K/9 from 6.27 to 12.15 and shrunk his BB/9 from 2.85 to 1.01 for the Big Ten’s second-best K/BB ratio at 12.00. His 3.04 ERA and 1.20 WHIP leads qualified Bruin pitchers, and he’s yet to give up a home run across 26.2 frames.

Most impressively, Barnett’s 2.01 FIP – a mark significantly less than the 4.49 FIP he posted as a sophomore – ranks first in the Big Ten among qualified pitchers.

With current Friday starter junior right-hander Cody Delvecchio’s ERA hovering near seven, it might not be long before Barnett takes the reins as UCLA’s game one starter.

Finest in the field

The Bruins posted a .965 fielding percentage in 2024 for their worst mark since at least 2016.

This year, UCLA is up to .981 – tied with Oregon for the 13th-best rate in the nation.

Sophomore third baseman Roman Martin has a .957 fielding percentage – a massive improvement from the abysmal .769 he posted across limited time in the field as a freshman.

Cholowsky’s .973 mark is an improvement from the .921 he posted in 2024, when he played a majority of the season out of position at third base, and he hasn’t committed an error since Feb. 25.

And mainstays in the Bruin lineup – Levu, Brennan and Salgado – have yet to record an error this season.

College baseball doesn’t provide the same variety of defensive stats as MLB, at least publicly, and the eye test can only tell so much.

But the Bruins appear far better off with Cholowsky as their everyday shortstop and Brennan as their constant center fielder than they did with former-Bruin Cody Schrier at short and a mishmash of players splitting time in center.

While sophomore Phoenix Call leads the team with seven errors in 2025, Savage said it’s just a matter of time before he adjusts to playing second base.

Call came to UCLA as a shortstop/outfielder, primarily played the outfield in his limited action as a freshman and spent the summer splitting time between center field, right field, shortstop and second base in the Cape Cod League before becoming the Bruins’ everyday second baseman in 2025.

They don’t even need to make any major strides – if the Bruins can keep up their improved defense and maintain the rest of the positive steps they’ve taken this season, they could easily become a dark-horse candidate to be fielding grounders and catching flyballs in Omaha, Nebraska, come June.