Once-Mighty Cougars Enter League Play With Low Hopes

As usual, Washington State is eagerly awaiting this weekend’s start of the Pacific-10 Conference North Division baseball title race - but not necessarily for the usual reasons.

Normally the Cougars charge confidently into conference play as the team to beat. Normally, they drool over the prospect of fattening up against division opponents and building on a storied past that includes 41 conference or divisional titles.

This year, however, third-year coach Steve Farrington’s young team enters league play eager to simply find somebody - anybody - it can beat, because there haven’t been many non-conference opponents who have fallen into that category so far this spring.

The Cougars, who open Pac-10 play at 2 p.m. today against Oregon State at Coleman Field in Corvallis, Ore., are a horrendous 2-23 after having dropped their last nine games. They are only 12 losses shy of the school-record 35 suffered last spring, and they still have 30 regular-season games remaining.

To make matters worse, centerfielder Steve Gleason - a .356 hitter - is listed as day-to-day because of a back strain suffered during football practice. And OSU, which started the week at 12-5, is currently the hottest of the four teams in the North Division.

“They’ve been swinging the bats pretty well of late,” Farrington said of the Beavers, who return five starters and 18 letterwinners from last year’s 32-16-1 team that finished second to Washington in the North Division standings.

‘They’re playing better than anyone else in the league right now.”

OSU boasts two returning all-league picks in infielders Ryan McDonald and Ryan Lipe, and several seasoned pitchers, who helped the Beavers post the lowest team earned-run average in the division last season.

Still, coach Pat Casey’s team was again picked by league coaches to finish second to UW (11-9), which has eight starters back - including All-American Chris Magruder, who batted .316 and drove in 57 runs as a freshman last year.

Portland State (4-18) was picked to finish last, but Farrington admitted his Cougars need to make some big strides during the second half of the season to stay ahead of the Vikings and out of the North Division cellar.

“Our biggest problem has been on the mound,” said Farrington, whose staff takes an unsightly ERA of 8.61 into conference play. “We haven’t been able to keep the ball down, and we’ve been giving too many freebies - walks and hit batsmen.”

The Cougars, who have started as many as six freshmen, figured to struggle early. Only four of Farrington’s 11 letterwinners started more than a handful of games last year, and several key players - including Gleason and starting outfielder Duane Stewart - have been splitting time between football and baseball.

Still, WSU has been getting it done offensively. Gleason, a sophomore, and freshmen Ray Hattenburg, Shawn Stevenson, Ryan Smith and Brad Philley, another football player, are currently hitting over .300. Stewart has hit six home runs and the Cougars have averaged more than six runs a game.

But junior transfer Burdette Greeny remains the ace of Farrington’s pitching staff, despite an 0-4 record and 6.04 ERA.

“I don’t know if you ever have enough offense,” Farrington admitted, “but I think we have enough if we can just get a couple of sound pitching performances out of a couple of different kids each weekend.

“The key for us is to get our pitchers to just keep us in the game so we can be more offensive minded and use our speed to create some things.”

, DataTimes