The Collapse Of The Cougars WSU’s Baseball Program Rates A Far Cry From Its Success Of The Past

Welcome to the new age of Washington State baseball.

The Awkward Age.

Where progress has come to be measured in tiny, trembling steps - like back-to-back wins over Hawaii-Hilo - instead of three, four, even five consecutive Pacific-10 Conference North Division championships.

Where pitchers with double-digit earned run averages still get regular starts on a staff that has produced such names as John Olerud, Aaron Sele and Eric Wilkins.

And where a program that averaged more than 42 wins a season from 1983 through 1990 is limping along at 5-26 and in danger of surpassing the school-record of 35 losses it suffered last spring.

The Cougars, who open a four-game Pac-10 series against archrival Washington at 3 p.m. this afternoon at Bailey Field, have 24 regular-season games remaining and - despite their current three-game win streak - are on pace to finish 9-46.

That’s an alarming thought for anyone associated with a program that has won 41 conference championships - including nine Pac-10 North titles.

Incredibly, WSU pitchers have hit 60 batters and walked another 165 this spring. They rank last in the Pac-10 with a combined staff ERA of 8.30.

The Cougars have lost 16 games by five or more runs and have been outscored 320-185. They have already suffered through losing streaks of six, eight and 12 games and rank last in the Pac-10 defensively with a fielding average of .930.

“We’ve definitely been out-polished,” said third-year coach Steve Farrington, who is 59-91 since taking over for the legendary Chuck “Bobo” Brayton in 1995. “We’ve been handled on the mound pretty well a couple of times, but more often than not we’ve beaten ourselves defensively and with a lack of playing the kind of good, quality, sound Division-I baseball we’re capable of playing.”

These are, indeed, troubling times for what was once the premier program in WSU’s athletic department. And the collapse has been as sudden as it has been confounding.

From 1987 to 1991, the Cougars won five consecutive North Division championships. They finished second in 1992 and tied for third in 1993 before slipping to fifth in 1994, the last of 33 seasons under Brayton, the winningest coach in the school’s history.

Farrington won a division title in his rookie year, but the Cougars finished 28-30 overall and posted only their second losing season since 1920. Last spring, they slipped to 26-35 and finished third in a four-team North Division race at 12-12.

On the positive side, Farrington has recruited some promising young talent, particularly in regards to position players. Four of his top five hitters are freshmen.

But the Cougars’ horrible showing this season perplexes some of the former players who helped build the program’s rich history.

“Obviously, this year has been a disappointment, record-wise,” said Chris Camp, a pitcher on the 1976 team that Brayton took to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. “I know (Farrington) fairly well. He’s a nice individual, a good guy.

“But you’ve got to look at the bottom-line record to assess how things are going. I’d say he’s really struggling right now. And I know that just about any alumnus you call is going to be pretty negative on Coach Farrington.”

Camp, vice president of Camp Automotive, Inc., said he drove to Lewiston early this spring to watch his old team play Oregon State in the Banana Belt Tournament. He left after watching OSU score 10 runs in one inning of a 17-3 rout of the Cougars.

“The thing that’s the most alarming to me isn’t how much they’re losing, but the way they’re losing,” Camp said. “They’re getting way behind in the early innings, walking way too many people, hitting way too many batters and making way too many errors.”

Pat Crook, an outfielder and catcher for the Cougars in the early 1960s, played under Brayton and his predecessor Buck Bailey and was a member of two championship teams. He, too, is disappointed by the wrong turn the program has taken.

“It makes you wonder what’s going on,” said Crook, a Pullman resident, whose son Brady also played for Brayton. “I get a lot of calls from people asking me just that, like I know what the hell’s the matter.

“It’s tough enough being a Cougar the way it is, but this year has been an all-around hard year. We’ve taken our lumps in football and basketball over the years, but people would always say, ‘Wait until spring when we get you on the baseball diamond.’ Now, they can’t even say that.”

Athletic director Rick Dickson, the man who hired Farrington from Lower Columbia College, has heard much more vicious criticism of his hire than that expressed by Camp.

The problems, according to Dickson, are varied and complex. And they started a couple of years before Farrington’s arrival, when the NCAA slapped the baseball program with a four-year probation and took away the equivalent of two full-ride scholarships for the illegal use of financial aid.

In addition, WSU beefed up its schedule in an attempt to play more top Division I teams and boost its power rating.

And the once-lowly Washington Huskies, under coach Ken Knutson, have emerged as one the best programs in the Pacific Northwest - and one of WSU’s worst recruiting nightmares.

Brayton, who lost nine straight games to the archrival Dawgs prior to his retirement, saw the change of power coming.

“The Huskies started playing much better and recruiting much better,” he said. “They always used to recruit pretty good from their side of the state, but now they seem to be coming into Yakima and some of our old haunts and getting some guys.”

Dickson, noting that this is the first year Farrington has been able to use the NCAA’s maximum of 11.7 full-ride scholarships, said he plans to let the current situation play itself out “to see how much is attributable” to scholarship limitations, probation, overscheduling and not living up to expectations.

Farrington, too, has heard the booster rumblings and - to a certain extent - understands their origins.

“Even if you evaluate everything we’ve done, it still boils down to the win-loss thing, and who could be happy with 5-26?” he said. “But you can’t worry about what people say. The fact is, we’re doing the things we need to do to get to where we need to be. Sometimes, you wish you could take bigger steps to get there, but we’re finding we can’t.

“We’ve got to take some smaller steps - settle for smaller successes for now, and hope that if people really want to know what’s going on and take the time to find out, then maybe they can continue to support us.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LOOKING BACK Washington State’s baseball success, overall and in the Pac-10 North, over the past 10 years: Year Overall Pac-10 Place 1987 44-19 18-6 First 1988 52-14 18-4 First 1989 37-20 16-8 First 1990 48-19 19-5 First 1991 37-25 14-6 First 1992 31-23 16-14 Second 1993 34-24 16-14 Third 1994 35-26 11-19 Fifth 1995 28-30 18-12 First 1996 26-35 12-12 Third 1997 5-26 1-3