Ten years ago, Long Beach State headed into its season boasting a roster that included future major leaguers Jered Weaver, Troy Tulowitzki, Cesar Ramos and Jason Vargas. That team went on to win 41 games, finish 2nd in the Big West to Cal State Fullerton and upset No. 1 Stanford on its way to the NCAA Super Regionals.
This year, only one thing remains from that 2004 season: CSUF is still the team to beat in the Big West.
It hasn’t been a sudden, dramatic fall for the Dirtbags. It hasn’t even been a gradual slip only noticeable in statistics and on paper. It has been a roller coaster ride, hopping up and down the conference standings and seemingly always coming up just short of a berth in the NCAA tournament.
The last time the Dirtbags advanced to the postseason was 2008. In 2009, they finished fifth in the Big West, and in 2010 they dropped all the way to ninth in Mike Weathers’ final season as head coach.
Then Troy Buckley came in.
Buckley turned things around immediately, taking a 23-32 team to a record right around .500. The only problem is, LBSU has kept hanging around .500 ever since: it finished 28-27 in 2012 and 29-27 in 2013.
The overall record has been skewed slightly by a difficult nonconference schedule, but many Dirtbag fans remember when the team would be expected to compete with those difficult nonconference opponents.
This year, hope and optimism is accompanied by fear of disappointment yet again. LBSU was picked to finish fifth in the Big West despite returning seven starters in the field and introducing a freshman shortstop in Garrett Hampson who, in a perfect world, is the next Tulowitzki.
Does this make the Dirtbags underrated? Or is the Big West so strong of a conference that even relatively good teams finish fifth? Of course, there’s always the possibility that neither of those things are true, and the Dirtbags are just destined for another .500 season caused not by strength of schedule but by their own mediocrity.
This weekend’s series against Vanderbilt will once again provide a quick barometer of where the Dirtbags stand. Can the Dirtbags’ lineup carry a beaten up pitching staff while it recovers from an absurd number of Tommy John surgeries? If the answer to that question is no, then get ready for another long season. If the answer is yes, though, then maybe the fourth time is the charm for Buckley and the Dirtbags.