As Cal Poly Baseball enters the final stretch of their season, the team sits three games back of first-place UC Santa Barbara and just one game back of UC Irvine. Owen Roberts | Mustang News.

As the Big West season begins to wind down, the Mustangs find themselves three games behind conference leader and No. 22 UC Santa Barbara. 

Cal Poly (17-7 Big West) is behind first-place UC Santa Barbara (20-4 Big West) and second-place and No. 15 UC Irvine (18-6 Big West.)

The Mustangs hold tiebreakers over the Gauchos and Anteaters after taking two out of three games in each of their three-game series earlier in the season.

To win the Big West, UC Santa Barbara must lose three games, and Irvine must lose one while maintaining its win-loss ratio. 

How the Mustangs got here

The Big West Title has evaded Larry Lee’s squad since 2014, but unlike previous close runs, finishing second in 2017, 2018, and 2022, this year’s success was seemingly unexpected, according to the rest of the conference. 

In the preseason Big West coach’s poll, Cal Poly was picked to finish seventh, plenty behind the Gauchos and Anteaters. Last season, the Mustangs went 11-19 in conference play, their worst Big West record in a decade. 

However, a mid-March series win against Blue-Green rival UC Santa Barbara put the conference on notice. At the time, the Gauchos were No. 25 in the nation and were rolling, winning seven straight. 

Redshirt sophomore Jakob Wright opened on Friday, pitching 5 1/3 innings, only letting up two runs as the Mustangs cruised to an 8-3 upset victory. 

Two days later, freshman Griffin Naess shut down the Gaucho offense for 6 1/3 innings to complete the first series win against UC Santa Barbara since 2019. 

From then on, the Mustangs went 13-5 in conference games, including a series win in three games over UC Irvine, where the Mustangs outscored the No. 9 ranked Anteaters 13-5.

“Coach Lee always talks about hunting; it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, we’re the underdog,” senior first baseman Joe Yorke said on The Gallop podcast. 

Yorke leads the team in RBIs (45), and batting average (.312). His performance at the plate is accompanied by junior All-American catcher Ryan Stafford, who is leading the team in average (.382), hits (81), slugging percentage (.594) and home runs (6). 

The Mustangs play sixth-place UC San Diego in La Jolla, CA, and seventh-place Long Beach State at Baggett Stadium to round out the season. The Tritons are 15-12 in the conference play with a series win over UC Irvine, while the Beach is 8-16. 

UC San Diego has performed well against Cal Poly since joining the Big West in 2021. In their nine games since then, the Mustangs are 2-7 and were swept twice.

When asked about the upcoming stretch, Yorke said it was business as usual in the clubhouse.

“With the team we have this year, we don’t ever have to ramp it,” Yorke said. “This team does a great job of being ready to go no matter what the situation is or what team it is.” 

However, the Mustangs will need help from some Big West foes to win the conference. 

What needs to happen for Cal Poly to come out on top 

The Gauchos are in the driver’s seat, controlling their destiny three games ahead of the Msutangs and playing opponents they should be able to beat on paper in CSU Northridge and UC Riverside. 

The Matadors pose the most significant threat of knocking off the No. 1 seed. The Matadors are in fifth place and have beaten UC San Diego and Cal Poly, plus a series win over UC Davis. 

CSU Northridge is 15-9 in Big West play and 29-19 overall, with out-of-conference wins against the University of Utah and Fresno State. 

However, they would unlikely sweep the Gauchos, who have yet to be swept all year, leaving Cal Poly’s hopes in the hands of the worst team in the Big West, UC Riverside. 

Riverside is 5-19 in the conference, swept by CSUN, Cal Poly, San Diego, Hawaii and Irvine. In conference, they bolster a negative 117-run differential. 

Irvine is also one game ahead of the Mustangs. In their final six games, the Anteaters play CSUN and second-to-last-place Fullerton. 

Although it is more realistic to pencil in Irvine dropping a game, they have the most series sweeps out of any team in the Big West this season, sweeping Cal State Bakersfield, Hawaii, Riverside and Long Beach. 

A daunting task lies ahead for the Mustangs as they worry about themselves and teams across the Big West.

Yorke feels that the games ahead are actually no different than the previous 24;

“Every single game is a big game, which makes it that there are no big games because every single game matters. We’ve been trying to win out the whole year, which is good.” 

Cal Poly starts the stretch on May 17-19 against UC San Diego at Triton Baseball Field.