Cal Opens Baseball Season at Houston on Friday

Bears picked to finish eighth in Pac-12, but have a budding star in R.J. Green

Cal’s baseball team has a lot of questions as it begins its 2023 season on Friday in the first game of a three-game road series against Houston.

The Bears lost six players to major-league draft after going 29-27 overall and 14-16 in the Pac-12, which tied for sixth place in the 11-team conference. And not much more is expected this season, as Cal was picked to finish eighth.

The only Cal player on the 32-man preseason all-conference squad is sophomore catcher Caleb Lomavita, who hit .272 with seven homer as a freshman last season.

Head coach Mike Neu is counting on his depth to get to the NCAA playoffs for the first time since 2019.

“I don’t think we’ve ever lost this much, but also had this much experience coming back,” Neu said.

The Bears played their best baseball late last season, when they won their final six regular-season games to make it to the eight-team Pac-12 tournament. This season nine teams will reach the Pac-12 tournament, which will be divided into three, three-team groups.

Besides Lomavita, Neu is counting on the potential shown by outfielder R.J. Green, who hit .293 with six homers as a freshman last season. He was particularly effective late in the season, hitting .545 (12-for-22) over the final five games.

“I’ve been really fortunate to see Dylan Beavers and Andrerw Vaughn,” Neu said of Cal’s two recent first-round major league draft choices, “and R.J. is definitely as talented as those guys.”

Head coach Mike Neu (left), R.J. Green (center) and Paulshawn Pasqualotto

Pitching will be a concern, because the Bears lost all three of their pitchers who started weekend games last season. Neu is hoping right-hander Paulshawn Pasqualotto can return to top form after missing much of the 2021 season and all of the 2022 season with an injury. He was 4-3 with a 4.57 ERA as a freshman two years ago before missing the final six weeks of the season.

Cal added four transfers, the most significant being outfielder Kade Kretzschmar, a graduate transfer from Dartmouth, who was the Ivy League player of the Year in 2022, when he hit .353 with seven homers and 46 RBIs.

After playing unranked Houston on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Cal returns to the Bay Area to face third-ranked Stanford on the Cardinal’s home field on Tuesday.

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