A huddle of little kids surrounded David Esquer last Sunday afternoon, eager to get something signed by the Cal baseball team's coach.

Only a few minutes earlier, a huddle of bigger kids had also grouped around Esquer and looked just as eager-eager to celebrate a win in their final game of 2009, to clap up Chris Petrini for his outstanding pitching performance and possibly to be done with a season that, after a promising start, had mercifully come to an end.

Asked for his first impressions of the 2009 campaign, Esquer went back to the same date that several of his players have used to mark the start of the turnaround: March 31 at AT&T Park, when the Bears defeated San Francisco to improve to 15-10.

"When we walked out of AT&T Park, I think our RPI was in the top 10, and our strength of schedule was No. 1 in the nation," Esquer said. "We were feeling pretty good about where we had been already and what it meant about what we could do."

They didn't win again for two weeks.

Before AT&T Park, opposing coaches had called Cal the best offensive team that they'd seen all season. The Bears had beaten Vanderbilt and Arkansas, swept Long Beach State and won a series against Stanford. They woke up on the morning of April 1 on the brink of the top 25 with a playoff-caliber resume and the talent to get them there.

And two months later, the announcement of the all Pac-10 teams underscored the burning question surrounding this team: With almost half of its starting lineup earning first-team all-conference honors, how did Cal (24-29, 9-18 in the conference) possibly manage to finish ninth in the Pac-10?

"I guess the disappointing thing is that in one of just our average years, we'd be a playoff team," Esquer said. "At 14-13, we'd be a playoff team right now. We didn't even have an average year, which would've gotten us where we wanted to be."

Instead, the Bears just narrowly avoided their lowest Pac-10 win total in over a decade. After AT&T Park, they went into a tailspin, getting blown out 19-7 by Long Beach State the next day and ultimately losing eight games in a row to drop below .500 for good. They went 4-13 in the month of April and 9-19 overall after March 31. They won two out of 12 conference games on the road.

Part of that could be attributed to a Pac-10-worst 5.74 ERA and the injuries that inflated it. Sophomore Kevin Miller, who began the season as Cal's Friday starter, actually logged 50 innings despite pitching the entire year on an injured left hip that will require surgery over the offseason. Junior Blake Smith, the Bears' first Saturday starter, injured his lat muscle and was shelved-for pitching duties, anyway-from April 5 on.

What followed was a string of experiments and spot-starts. Eleven different pitchers started a game for Cal in 2009, and Esquer admitted that there were times when he was "piecing together the pitching staff during weekend series."

But the Bears' problems extended beyond the bullpen.

"Sometimes when we did pitch we didn't hit enough, and when we hit enough we didn't pitch," Esquer said. "You can easily look at our pitching and think that's the target, but when we went to Oregon State we didn't hit all weekend. At Washington we didn't hit enough, and at Arizona we didn't hit enough.

"There was really no one place we could go (to fix the situation). I wish it was as easy as, 'This was the one place.'"

Cal won't be helped next season by the probable loss of three of its four all Pac-10 first-teamers to the MLB Amateur Draft-Smith, center fielder Brett Jackson and second baseman Jeff Kobernus. But both Esquer and Jackson said that the Bears should have the right pieces-either on their bench or in the incoming freshman class-to rebuild the puzzle in 2010.

"I think that there's a ton of talent in the future," Jackson said. "With these coaches and this talent, there's certainly better seasons to come than this."

Tags: CAL BASEBALL, DAVID ESQUER, BRETT JACKSON