Hoping To Follow

Washington teams hope to follow Oregon State's lead

By John Boyle
February 19, 2008

SEATTLE—The sun was shining on the Washington campus on a recent January morning.

"It looks like baseball weather," Huskies baseball coach Ken Knutson observed through his office window, ignoring the fact that frost still decorated Seattle lawns on this particular morning.

Despite the unusually cold winter gripping the Puget Sound region this winter, Knutson put on a brave face, saying his team will head outside when practice started the following week.

"We'll start February 1st and we'll be outside," he said. "We have turf. It'll just be cold, and you've got to deal with that."

Across the Evergreen State in Pullman, where snow was hammering the region, Washington State's players were going to need more than an extra layer or two of clothing if they wanted to practice outdoors. Just days before the calendar flipped from January to February, a snowplow would have been more useful than a rake at Bailey-Brayton Field.

Yet while Pac-10 powers like UCLA, Arizona and Arizona State enjoy warm and (usually) dry winters perfect for offseason workouts and preseason practices, Washington and Washington State insist that their geography really isn't that big of a disadvantage.

John Olerud made Washington State a power in the late 1980s

"You've just got to play the hand you were dealt, and we don't look at it as a disadvantage," Washington State coach Donnie Marbut said. "It's colder, and we get more rain than in Tempe. We get more snow than in L.A., but that's just the way it goes."

Both Marbut and Knutson agree that while Washington winters aren't ideal for baseball, their schools' indoor facilities enable players to keep their skills sharp.

"Our offseason doesn't change much whether we were here or in L.A.," Marbut said. "It would still be very, very similar. We'd do a little bit more stuff outside, but in the offseason, we're doing a lot more individual work anyway, so it doesn't change a whole lot."

Recruiting Wrinkles

With new NCAA rules restricting offseason practice time, being in a warm climate is less advantageous than it was in the past.

Where weather can play a major role in recruiting. It's not uncommon to hear a top recruit from the state to cite a desire to play somewhere warm as one of their main reasons for going to a school like Arizona State or Cal State Fullerton. And forget about trying to bring top players from those areas to Seattle or Pullman.

"For us, this year our roster is entirely in-state guys," Knutson said. "I always sell them that you can play at a very high level of baseball and you can go to a really great school . . . But it would be really difficult to bring a kid from warm weather to play here. It's hard. I haven't had a kid from Southern California in a number of years . . . If I've got a kid that I'm recruiting that just wants to go play in the sun, I can give him all the reasons why he should stay home, but it's still not going to be as warm here."

Marbut contends that an undesirable climate can have its advantages when it comes to forming a roster.

"I think the kids that show up in Pullman, you get a tough kid," he said. "You don't get a silver-spoon kid. The kids you sign up here, they're tough kids that we really want to coach. We're getting the types of kids we want to have. If we were coaching in a warmer area, we'd still want the type of kids that we're getting in Pullman."

Follow The Beavers

The Huskies and Cougars don't have to look far—geographically or historically speaking—to see that baseball can thrive in a less-than-ideal climate. The Cougars once dominated the Pac-10 North before the conference did away with a two-division format after the 1998 season, and Washington won back-to-back Pac-10 titles in '97-'98. The Huskies went to regionals three years in a row from 2002-04, but the Cougars haven't been since 1990. Yet the best validation of Northwest baseball lies 250 miles south of UW in Corvallis, where Pat Casey has turned Oregon State into an unlikely national power. The 2006 and 2007 national champs have made it tough for anyone else in the region to complain about disadvantages.

"The Beavers have certainly validated that teams can compete here, and 10 years ago, we won two Pac-10 championships in a row," Knutson said. "People know."

And while neither Washington nor Washington State would be considered a national title contender this season, both are optimistic they can compete with the conference's and nation's elite. Both coaches say there is enough talent in the Northwest to show that Oregon State's recent success is something their teams can strive for, rather than an anomaly.

Oregon State has facility and weather advantages over the Cougars and Huskies, but both programs see the Beavers' success as a positive, not a cause for jealousy.

"It's great for baseball," Marbut said. "It shows the Northwest kids that they can stay home and succeed. And hopefully we're creating that same type of environment. They've got the Oregon kids staying home and helping them win championships, and we're trying to do the same thing: have our kids stay home and succeed here."

So while Oregon State has raised the bar on expectations for the Huskies and Cougars, they have also raised the level of optimism.

"You can be as competitive here as anywhere," Knutson said. "It's still three strikes you're out, four balls you walk, you hit one over the fence it's a home run. It's still the same game and we plan to be competitive."

John Boyle covers Washington for the Everett (Wash.) Herald.