PCAA Baseball Previews : Fullerton in Power Struggle : Garrido Has Mounds of Talent, but Titans Are Lacking in Punch

As any TV baseball commentator will tell you until you want to throw a shoe through the screen of your Sony, good pitching will beat good hitting every time. And for this, Cal State Fullerton Coach Augie Garrido is grateful.

Garrido is faced with a power shortage at Fullerton this season. With rare exceptions, the Titans are expected to score runs as if they were playing in an Over-the-Line tournament--one at a time. They will be moving runners over instead of hitting balls over fences; stealing bases instead of trotting around them.

But the prevailing feeling is that the Titans have pitchers so good at preventing runs that their hitters may not have to produce many. It’s simple arithmetic: What the Titans may lack in three-run homers, they hope to make up for with a four-man rotation.

Lately, it all has been adding up rather nicely. The Titans open Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. play today with a weekend series at UC Santa Barbara. Fullerton, after stumbling to a 1-5 start, has won 12 of its last 14 games and appears ready to make a convincing pitch for the PCAA title.

It comes as no surprise that the Titans (19-10) have received some solid starting pitching from junior right-hander Mike Harkey and senior left-hander Larry Casian. Harkey is a preseason All-American and is considered to be one of the top collegiate pitching prospects in the country. Casian was 6-1 with a 2.84 earned-run average in 1986 and a first-team All-PCAA selection.

What was not expected was that Longo Garcia, a transfer from Orange Coast College, would enter PCAA play with a better record (6-1) than Harkey (3-2) or Casian (3-1), or that freshman Mark Beck (3-3 with a 3.37 ERA and four complete games) would emerge so quickly as a bona fide fourth starter.

Among them, Harkey, Casian, Garcia and Beck have pitched 13 complete games and have struck out 184 hitters. This has helped ease one of Garrido’s biggest preseason concerns: the need for someone to emerge as the Titans’ bullpen stopper. So far, the Fullerton bullpen has had a pretty boring season.

“Our starting pitchers are finishing,” Garrido said, “so we’re not so dependent on short relief. Our thinking is that when a starter goes to the mound, he’s thinking about staying there for nine innings.”

All of this has made the absence of the long ball a little easier for Garrido to take. Through 29 games, the Titans have hit only 12 home runs, well behind their pace of last season, when they hit 53 in 58 games. Although Garrido doesn’t expect a drastic surge in power, he does think the Titans are capable of more than they have generated so far.

“I don’t think we’re power less ,” he said. “But right now we’re using one of those EverReady double-A type batteries to power our bats. I think we have got more juice than that.”

But until that juice starts flowing, the Titans will have to rely on their pitching.

After a 1-2 start, Harkey has won his last two decisions and lowered his earned-run average to 2.76, the best among the four starters. Garrido speculates that the slow start may have been a result of some the big things that were expected from Harkey and his fastball after both were the talk of the Alaskan League last summer. Harkey was 10-3 and was named the most valuable player of the summer circuit, attracting the attention of pro scouts and baseball reporters.

“Just the fact that he had to handle all of that has been a distraction,” Garrido said. “It brings with it a lot of responsibility and creates a lot of expectations. But I think he has it in perspective now. It’s been a learning process, and it will be good for him.”

While Harkey got all the preseason headlines, Garcia quietly worked his way into the starting rotation and performed as Garrido hoped he would. Garcia, a former Los Amigos High School standout, has allowed only one run in each of his last two victories.

“We brought him in thinking he was one of the best pitchers in the area in junior college baseball,” Garrido said. “Our pitching is our strong point, and he’s one of our most consistent pitchers.”

The Titans’ most consistent hitter thus far has been leadoff man Mark Baca. Baca, one of the key elements in Garrido’s easy-does-it offense, leads the team with a .388 batting average, 32 runs scored, 11 doubles and 25 stolen bases.

Tony Trevino has been another of the Titans’ early-season success stories. Ken Garcia was the projected starter at third base but was academically ineligible to participate in Fullerton’s fall scrimmages. Trevino, who hit .235 in a part-time role last season, won the third base position and is hitting .339 with 17 RBIs.

Andy Mota, whose father, Manny, knows a little about hitting in a pinch, has taken over the designated-hitter role and is batting .382. Greg Manion has leveled off somewhat after a fast start but still leads the team with 24 RBIs and is second to Baca with 14 stolen bases.

Second baseman Mike Ross is back in the lineup after being slowed by a knee injury, and he has combined with shortstop Mark Razook, who started as a freshman last season, to give Garrido a solid double-play combination.

Garrido said the defensive improvement of catcher Mike Ham, who has the unenviable task of trying to pick up where All-American John Eccles (13 home runs and 81 RBIs in 1986) left off, has played a big part in Fullerton’s recent success.

Garrido is hoping such players as Ham, first baseman Keith Kaub and Garcia, now in right field, will make bigger contributions to an offense that gets runs the hard way.

“We’ll just have to be more patient for runs and work a little harder for them,” Garrido said. “We’ll play some innings where we’ll get nine hitters to the plate and score three runs. That requires a higher concentration level. It’ll take a lot more people to make one run.”