UH baseball: The 2015 season

One of the questions I plan on asking Hawaii coach Mike Trapasso when we talk for our season-ending baseball story for the newspaper this week will be about the standards for UH baseball in the Big West Conference.

What are they and what should they be?

If you look at only the Big West season, Hawaii placed fifth in the nine-team conference at 12-12 overall. A road sweep of Long Beach State helped overcome two stinging loses at Cal Poly and marked a six-win improvement from 2014. In a baseball-rich conference like the Big West, finishing .500 is a solid achievement.

What hurts is an overall 21-32 record, marking the third consecutive year Hawaii has lost at least 30 games in a season. That has never happened, and the reason for it is a 9-20 nonconference record.

It started with two losses to Oregon, which just barely snuck into the NCAA tournament, in which Hawaii blew late leads. The real low points were the two losses to Hofstra and the two loses to only split a four-game series against a New Mexico State team that finished 11-38.

Add on the 7-4 loss to Abilene Christian last weekend and Hawaii went just 8-5 against teams with an RPI worse than 200. That’s not good and is one of the main reasons the Rainbow Warriors themselves finished with an RPI of 201.

In terms of wins and loses, the reality of the season is Hawaii lost too many games to teams it shouldn’t have, and couldn’t beat any of the good teams. The only way to find more success in the Big West in the future is to figure out how to avoid losing all three games against the likes of Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly and UC Irvine. In three seasons in the BWC, Hawaii is an astonishing 2-25 against those clubs. This season, it was 1-10 against teams in the top 50 in RPI.

Hawaii found its closer in Quintin Torres-Costa, who was brilliant in that role. The only problem was, it took Hawaii 35 games and two losses against Cal Poly to figure that out. L.J. Brewster was a quality starter and Tyler Brashears was the dominant top-end rotation guy you need in the Big West. Jarrett Arakawa showed flashes of brilliance in his fifth year but mainly just gutted out his final season after two shoulder surgeries.

Andrew Jones had a nice run from the middle until the end of the Big West season and Cody Culp and Matt Valencia had strong starts to the season, but again, Hawaii failed to produce much consistency out of the bullpen. Senior Eric Gleese was the only reliever to sport an ERA of better than 4.00, and while he finished with a 0.00 ERA, allowed a lot of inherited runners to score when he came in.

Still, a 3.87 team ERA was good enough for 85th in the country and once Torres-Costa was locked into that closer role, Hawaii succeeded. Outside of some depth issues, once Hawaii found its formula with Torres-Costa at the back end, the pitching was solid.

What ails this team, and has really been the No. 1 problem ever since Kolten Wong was drafted in the first round in 2011, is the offense has really, really struggled to score runs.

UH finished with a .245 batting average, ranking 281st out of 295 Division I teams. It’s the second time in three years Hawaii has finished in the bottom 15 in the country in batting average and fourth straight year UH has finished outside of the top 245.

Outside of senior center fielder Kaeo Aliviado, Hawaii had almost no power in its lineup, finishing 273rd in doubles (64) and 282nd in home runs (nine). Only one regular hit over .270 and that was shortstop Jacob Sheldon-Collins (.295), who was brought in for his defense more than his bat, yet proved to be a pleasant surprise hitting mostly out of the No. 9 spot.

So many games this season came down to a defensive play here or a bad pitch there, but the reality of it all is Hawaii puts itself in that position because it simply can’t score runs. When you score, you can overcome mistakes in other areas, but when you score only two runs or less in 22 of 53 games, it makes things difficult.

UH will return seven starters in catcher Chayce Ka’aua (.260, 9 2B, 21 runs), first baseman Eric Ramirez (.270, 4 2B, 1 3B, 29 RBIs), Sheldon-Collins, third baseman Johnny Weeks (.247, 1 2B, 1 3B, 10 runs in 89 ABs) and outfielders Marcus Doi (.223, 4 2B, 14 runs) and Alan Baldwin (.254, 6 2B, 2 3B, 1 HR, 20 RBIs). Designated hitter Alex Sawelson (.262, 8 2b, 1 3b, 20 RBIs) is also back.

Brewster, Brashears and Torres-Costa are also potential draft picks next month and how their summers go will have a huge bearing on what UH returns on the mound next season.

Trapasso has always shown the ability to go out and get good pitching and turn guys who had rough years one season into having good years the next. The key for this program moving forward is the offense. These 30-loss seasons could quickly become a distant memory if UH could simply find a way to produce more productively at the plate.

1:35 p.m. UPDATE: Brashears makes All-BWC first team; Torres-Costa named to second team