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Baseball: Breaking down the 2019 pitching staff

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The spring is here and so is Rice baseball. The new era under Matt Bragga will begin with some familiar names led on the mound by Matt Canterino.

Matt Bragga’s first season as the head coach for Rice baseball will be underway very soon. The Owls are expected to be led by a strong presence on the mound. Here’s how the starting rotation and the bullpen project entering the 2019 season.

The Rotation

Friday: Matt Canterino (2018: 7-5, 3.06 ERA, 116K, 22BB)

There are few preseason awards which omitted the Owls’ ace. Canterino was named the CUSA Preseason Pitcher of the Year as well as an All-American by Baseball America and the National College Baseball Writer’s Association. D1 Baseball tabbed him as their CUSA Preseason Pitcher of the Year, too.

Saturday: Addison Moss (2018: 2-4, 2.43 ERA, 53K, 16BB)

Moss and Canterino could establish themselves as one of the best 1-2 punches in Conference USA. Moss didn’t earn the same preseason recognition as Canterino, but the junior hurler returns from a sophomore campaign in which he allowed 2.3 walks per nine innings and held the best ERA on the team.

Sunday and midweek starters:

Roel Garcia underwent Tommy John surgery this winter, opening the door wide open for the Sunday and midweek starting roles. Coach Bragga will have several options to choose from and we could see several guys get a shot before the rotation begins to solidify itself.

Bragga has tabbed Jackson Parthasarathy (3 starts, 6.28 ERA) and Evan Kravetz as the top two guys entering the season. Kendal Jeffries (5 starts in 2018, 4.06 ERA) and Missouri transfer Drake Greenwood could get a chance, too.

The Bullpen

This is where things get interesting. Rice should have a deep crop of arms for the staff to deploy in a variety of ways. Brandon Deskins and Zach Esquivel are both quality relief options with the latter two putting on impressive showings in the Owls’ final fall scrimmage against Texas A&M. The duo each have some tricky movement on their stuff which makes them tricky to hit provided they can stick it in the zone.

On the back end, Garrett Gayle has the arm to cement himself as the team’s primary closer this season. He posted a stunning 0.45 ERA in the Cape Cod league this summer and has topped 97 MPH on the gun. Gayle finished second on the team to Canterino in strikeouts last year.

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Rice Athletics 2018: A Year in Review

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Rice athletics produced some memorable moments in 2018. Here’s an overview of how the Owls faired on the court, the field and in the gym over the past year.

Baseball

The Wayne Graham era at South Main came to an end this year. Graham’s 27-season tenure at Rice included 1,173 wins, 23 NCAA Tournament appearances, seven College World Series appearances and one National Championship in 2003. He owns the best winning percentage in school history (.689). Following the season, new head baseball coach Matt Bragga was introduced as the Owls’ next manager.

Basketball (men’s and women’s)

The men have a  roster filled with young players who have fought through growing pains in 2018. The Owls won seven games last season and enter CUSA play with five wins already under their belt.

After making it to the second round of the WNIT last March, the women’s team started strong again in the 2018-2019 season. The squad went 8-3 in non-conference play with one game remaining on Dec. 29 and has aspirations of a CUSA Title and an NCAA Tournament appearance.

Football

2018 was an important year for Rice football. Mike Bloomgren earned his first win regular season win and first conference win as a head coach against Prairie View and Old Dominion, respectively. Owls’ star running back Trevor Cobb was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. The team finished the year by signing 17 players during the early signing period including Jake Bailey, a Top 15 recruit in Conference USA.

Tennis (men’s and women’s)

The women’s team earned an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament, dropping a heartbreaker to Texas A&M in the Austin Regional. The men failed to make the NCAA Tournament, but Eric Rutledge and Sumit Sarkar were awarded All-CUSA First Team honors in doubles. Rutledge was named to the first team for singles. Sarkar was named to the second.

Soccer (women’s)

The team hung in through a tough 2018 campaign. Needing a tie in their final regular season game to clinch a spot in the CUSA Tournament, Rice topped Charlotte in the finale. The Owls finished the regular season at 4-5-1 before a loss in the conference tournament. There were a couple close calls with a 3-0 shutout of Louisiana Tech marking the top performance of the year.

Swimming (women’s)

Rice ended their year with a bang. The Owls finished second out of 31 scoring teams at the CSCAA National Invitational in March. Kaitlyn Swinney broke the school record for the 400-IM at the meet.

Volleyball

It was a banner year for the Owls’ volleyball squad. They set a program-best winning streak, reeling off 15-straight victories on their way to a Conference USA regular season championship. They’d add a CUSA Conference Championship too, thereby securing their fourth NCAA Tournament berth in school history.

Nicole Lennon, Lee Ann Cunningham and Grace Morgan were named to the CUSA First Team while Anota Adekunle and Carly Graham were selected to the CUSA All-Freshman team.

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Rice Baseball: Owls drop fall scrimmage to Texas A&M at Reckling Park

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Rice baseball donned their blue and gray at Reckling Park, hosting Texas A&M in a fall exhibition game on a brisk October evening.

Rice hosted their first home exhibition of the fall against Texas A&M. On a cool night at Reckling Park, the Owls fell to the Aggies 9-6 in 12 innings.

Texas A&M struck first, putting up four runs on a flurry of fourth inning hits against Rice pitcher Evan Kravetz. The Aggie pitching staff held the Owls in check for much of the early action, but the home team broke through with a crooked number of their own in the sixth.

Rice designated hitter Khevin Brewer mashed a bases-clearing double down the left field line. A bases-loaded walk tied the game at 4-4 entering the seventh. Texas A&M pushed a pair of unearned runs across in the seventh and Rice answered with singles in the seventh and eighth to tie the game at 6-6.

The game stayed deadlock through the next three innings before Texas A&M pushed across two runs in the 12th. Rice had one last chance to answer in the bottom half of the frame but wasn’t able to fight back.

The result is somewhat trivial in a scrimmage atmosphere, overall the night gave the young guys some valuable experience and gave the coaches a chance to see their players in action.

Offensive player of the game – Justin Collins, catcher

Justin Collins was seeing the ball well off just about every pitcher he faced. He picked up the Owls first hit of the night with a double in the second inning. He followed that up with singles in the fourth, sixth and seventh innings.

It was Collins who delivered for the Owls in their exhibition against Sam Houston last week, mashing a grand slam to give Rice a commanding lead. He hit .265 with 12 extra base hits in 2017 and will be trusted for more this season.

Pitcher of the game – Addison Moss, pitcher

With Matt Canterino on the shelf, resting from a busy fall that included the Cape Cod league and Team USA appearances, the Owls turned to Moss to start their tilt against the Aggies. He faced seven batters, allowed one hit and struck out one, throwing 16 strikes on 24 pitches.

Moss wasn’t perfect, but he kept a potent Aggie lineup from making much hard contact. He’ll be a piece of the starting rotation for the Owls once again this spring.

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Matt Bragga to hire assistants Cory Barton and Paul Janish

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After the hiring of Matt Bragga as their new head coach, Rice baseball continues to flush out their coaching staff. Assistant Cory Barton is the newest member of Bragga’s staff.

Matt Bragga has only been on the job for two weeks. In addition to getting situated in a new city and a new campus, he’s been hard at work assembling his staff. His first move was to bring back assistant coach and former Rice baseball player Paul Janish. Next, he went outside the walls of Reckling Park, hiring current Louisiana Tech assistant Cory Barton. The hire was first reported by D1 Baseball’s Kendall Rogers.

More: Matt Bragga eager to usher in a new era of Rice baseball

Barton comes to Rice after a short stint as the pitching coach at Louisiana Tech. He joined the Bulldogs for the 2018 season following a successful career at McNeese State. His tenure, although brief, was effective. The Bulldogs posted their lowest team ERA of this century, 3.48. That led all of Conference USA and is much closer to the standard that Rice strives to achieve.  Five of the pitchers on his staff had sub-3.00 ERAs and three of them pitched complete games.

In addition to what he’ll bring as far as wisdom on the mound, Barton is also an excellent recruiter. Ties to the south are going to be important for Bragga, and Barton certainly checks those boxes. He’s been making an impact on the recruiting trail since his days as the recruiting coordinator at Louisiana-Monroe and has elevated the level of talent at each of his steps along the way.

If Rice intends to put themselves back in the postseason conversation they’re going to need a continual influx of talent, and that takes good recruiters to get. Barton is one more piece to what continues to be a promising staff that Bragga is assembling so far.

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Anthony Rendon red-hot with Washington Nationals

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Rice baseball product Anthony Rendon is currently mashing his way through the MLB, riding one of the hottest streaks of his professional career.

Anthony Rendon earned the Howser Trophy when he was named National Player of the Year with the Owls in 2010. He later went on to be a first-round pick of the Washington Nationals in 2011 and been a successful big leaguer ever since. Currently in his sixth season in the bigs, Rendon is having one of the best stretches of his career.

A career .280 hitter with a decent amount of pop, Rendon has had a two-week stretch to remember. Beginning on June 17 against the Blue Jays, Rendon currently carries a nine-game hitting streak in which he’s been red-hot. He’s hit three home runs, six doubles and driven in seven RBI. Over the course of the nine games, Rendon is slashing .438/.471/.875. That’s an astounding 1.346 OPS. There are few hitters in the MLB seeing the baseball as well as he is right now.

Despite Rendon’s successes, the Nationals haven’t fared well. They’ve gone just 3-6 against the Blue Jays, Yankees, Orioles, Phillies and Rays in that stretch. The Yankees are a real World Series contender, but the rest of those clubs shouldn’t be able to keep up with the Nats’ firepower at the plate or arms on the mound. Regardless of the outcome, Rendon has done his part.

As of the latest update, Rendon wasn’t in the top-5 of the National League All-Star voting recipients at third base. He trails the Rockies’ Nolan Arendo, the Cubs’ Kris Bryant, the Braves’ Johan Camargo, the Reds’ Eugenio Suarez and the Dodgers’ Justin Turner. Perhaps an electrifying finish to the first half will be enough to change the minds of enough voters to earn Rendon his first All Star selection of his career.

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