Cal State Fullerton baseball fans who like change, who embrace the new, the different, the heretofore unknown, are going to love what awaits them this season.
Are you fans of a good mystery? Does Jason Dietrich and his coaching staff have the team for you.
Just as if David Bowie wrote “Changes” for them, Dietrich and his staff are turning to “face the strange” this season, his third at the helm of the CSUF baseball program. Practically everywhere they turn, a strange face greets them.
Twenty-two of them.
“There’s just a whole bunch of new guys. You’re talking about guys on the team from last year who didn’t play last year,” Dietrich said. “We lost six starting position players, two weekend arms and my closer. That’s a lot of experience that’s gone, which will happen. When I took this job, I knew it would happen. It was just a matter of when.”
Dietrich saw this coming because the Titans had 17 returners from 2022 to help the program regain much of its swagger. Between 2022 and 2023, the Titans improved by 10 games overall and six in the Big West, returning to the postseason for the first time since 2018.
That break-out-the-party-hats improvement, however, came with a nasty hangover. CSUF lost First-Team All-Big West outfielder Nate Nankil, second-team closer Jojo Ingrassia, second-team outfielder/DH Caden Connor and honorable-mention selections Tyler Stultz, Fynn Chester, Zach Lew and Cole Urman. Stultz and Chester were the aforementioned weekend arms —Dietrich’s designated Friday and Saturday starters.
“As you can imagine, we brought in a lot of guys to protect ourselves but knowing that we could lose a lot of guys either to the draft, graduation or injury,” Dietrich said. “You’re doing your best to bring in as many players as you can handle and have them compete for jobs. You do your best to do your homework, and we felt we did the best we could.”
This explains the 22 new faces and the 47 players who started…
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