Brian Green hopes a return home can snap Shocker baseball out of their hitting funk
A return home couldn’t have come at a better time for the Wichita State baseball team.
What sounded like a week in paradise a month ago turned in a week-long nightmare, as the Shockers lost a 4-game series at Hawaii and then lost to Division II Chaminade on the way home.
After a 2-6 start, a WSU team expected to contend for an American Athletic Conference championship will try to steady itself in a weekend series against Cal State Fullerton. The Shockers will keep the same weekend rotation in Brady Hamilton (3 p.m. Friday), Grant Adler (2 p.m. Saturday) and Jace Miner (noon Sunday) for their debut performance at Eck Stadium, Home of Tyler Field at Gene Stephenson Park.
“It’s really good to be home, but we’ve got to shake our head out and play some baseball,” WSU head coach Brian Green said. “We’ve seen some ghosts, we’re 2-6, so let’s relax and not be afraid to lose. I thought we were afraid to lose that Chaminade game, and if you ever play like that in the game of baseball, you are going to lose.”
In the winter, Green was confident the Shockers would once again feature an explosive offense. But through the first eight games, WSU is hitting just .226 as a team and averaging 4.3 runs per game.
Green suspects the slow start at the plate has to do with players wanting to live up to lofty preseason expectations and trying to do so without three key bats in the lineup — catcher Mauricio Millan, utility player Owen Washburn and outfielder Davis Mauzy.
“I think there’s been a little bit of press,” Green said. “We’ve got to find a way to just relax and just play baseball. I hope we learned from last week that we can’t play with that level of press.
“It’s really about us just being more competitive at the plate. That’s the ultimate goal for this weekend.”
Green hasn’t spent much time away from Eck Stadium the past two days, as he has worked with his hitters to get their minds right.
The Shockers flashed their potential in an 11-4 win at Hawaii, snapping the nation’s longest home winning streak. But then they floundered for the final three games of the road trip, losing all three games and scoring a total of seven runs.
The 6-4 loss to Chaminade still bothers Green, as WSU was rocked by a first-inning grand slam and never recovered. Because it was against a non-Division I opponent, the loss won’t impact WSU’s RPI — but that means little to Green at the moment.
“That was a really important game because our guys are supposed to show up and compete,” Green said. “We rolled into that game playing not to lose and playing tight. Our guys have to respond better than that, so I hope our guys learn from it. That was definitely a hangover game, no question about it.”
The Shockers hope a return to their home field can snap them out of their early-season funk. The team is also nearing full health, as Millan (wrist), Washburn (hamstring) and Mauzy could all return as soon as the March 5 game against Abilene Christian. Green also said that Kam Durnin, who has only been able to hit so far this season coming off Tommy John surgery, might return to the field and play either first or second base against Cal State Fullerton (1-7).
Green just hopes WSU shows better fight at the plate.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Green said. “We’ve been out on the field all day long this week and we’ve been very positive and upbeat, but I still saw some indicators that we are still a little on our heels. We’ve got to get off our heels. We need our pitching to continue to do what they’ve been doing and then we need to get our offense to respond. If you do it once, then you can do it again and that’s what we’re searching for this weekend.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 7:59 AM.
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