By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Baseball Beat Reporter // Photo Via Titus Wilkinson
San Jose State’s five-game marathon this weekend against San Diego State has been on first-year pitching coach Mat Keplinger’s mind – a lot.
“I have a daughter who’s almost two,” Keplinger began, “She woke up at like 3:30 this morning. So when I’m rocking her back to sleep and just holding her in the rocking chair … I’m playing out all of these scenarios.”
SJSU sits one game behind SDSU for first place in the Mountain West. Each and every pitching decision could determine the Spartans locking up the No. 1 seed in the Mountain West Conference Tournament.
However, the five-game in three-day marathon isn’t the only scheduling peculiarity.
SJSU is listed as the home team, but it won’t be playing in its home ballpark.
On Friday, SJSU will play at Cal Berkeley’s Stu Gordon Stadium for two games, followed by a seven-inning doubleheader at Stanford’s Klein Filed and back to Berkeley on Sunday for the final nine-inning affair.
It’s because The Spartans currently share Excite Ballpark Stadium with the San Jose Giants, a minor league affiliate of the MLB’s San Francisco Giants. Thanks to the Modesto Nuts coming to town, SJSU’s five-game marathon will be well, nuts.
“Flip [head coach Brad Sanfilippo] always says you got to be good on the road and I guess we got to be good on the road and at home at the same time,” said SJSU starting pitcher Jonathan Clark.
The Spartans’ 2023 campaign has been unlike anything Clark’s seen since arriving in 2019. Six of SJSU’s first 17 games were either canceled, delayed or postponed because of weather conditions. Plus, with the installation of a new lighting system, SJSU has only played one night game this season.
“Comes with the nature of using somebody else’s field,” joked Clark.
Game one of Friday night’s doubleheader will be a continuation of the game back in March at from the fourth inning with SJSU up 2-0. The game was rained out and the third game of the series was delayed and pushed back to this Friday because of poor field conditions.
Both teams had their Tuesday games of this week canceled to help lighten the load for this potential season-defining matchup.
“This is a big weekend, you can’t ignore that,” said Keplinger.
In Keplinger’s first year as head coach, SJSU’s collective ERA has dipped from 6.92 a year ago to 5.82 and opponent’s batting average from .291 to .271.
During this time, he says he’s built a “healthy relationship” with SJSU head coach Brad Sanfilippo when it comes to managing the bullpen.
“I absolutely feel confident in my decisions and the decisions that coach Sanfilippo makes,” said Keplinger.
Several hours after rocking his young daughter back to sleep, Keplinger sat with Sanfilippo to discuss this weekend’s ensemble.
“For today, I had a printout of games one through five. Who could possibly start? Who could possibly relieve with the lead? Who would relieve potentially if we were down?” said Keplinger.
Micky Thompson, SJSU’s best-starting pitcher this season, won’t be back to resume his start from March before it came to an abrupt ending in the fourth inning. Keplinger will likely have him go on Saturday to make sure his routine is undisturbed.
But as of Thursday afternoon it’s still undecided whether or not he’d like Clark to pick up where Thompson left off in game one or have him start the nine-inning affair after it. “We get one more night to sleep on how we want to strategize that,” said Keplinger.
Now for Keplinger, crafting the best way to efficiently and effectively use pitchers in a high-inning, short-timeline capacity isn’t anything new.
He’s gone through similar situations while serving as pitching coach for San Joaquin Delta College from 2012-20 during postseason tournaments.
“Typically the way you get through those you pitch guys who haven’t pitched a ton throughout the year and they’re called upon and they take advantage of the opportunity,” said Keplinger.
SImultaneously, he said that, “There’s going to be some situations where we might not use the bullpen as much as you may think.”
The situation is non-ideal and unorthodox, especially with eight conference games remaining this season. But the objective remains the same:
“Our job is to go out there and beat the crap out of somebody. That’s still the goal for the weekend. Now we got to do it five times,” said Clark.
