Darren Baker

After a tumultuous 2021 season where they narrowly missed regional playoffs, the Bears will look to come out strong this weekend as they open the 2022 season at the MLB4 Collegiate Baseball Tournament.

Grant Holman, Sean Sullivan, Ian Villers and Darren Baker round the 2021 crop of Bears heading to the MLB.

Despite logging a barn-burner win on Friday, Cal’s quiet bats and defensive errors against Washington State made stout pitching efforts and clutch plays obsolete.

Catcher Cole Elvis blasted a walk-off home run Friday while Cal’s pitching staff held the Dons in check for a majority of the four-game set.

Game three of the series, a 5-2 loss in Stockton, displayed all of the Bears’ early season flaws, both offensively and defensively.

Head coach Mike Neu and his Bears will take the field for the first time since last March in what could be a topsy-turvy 2021 season. Cal begins its journey with a four-game series against Pacific.

The Cal lineup had high expectations for the 2020 season, but the Bear hitters severely underperformed, a trend that is clearly exposed when evaluating the advanced statistics behind their performance.

Last spring, the Bears ended the season with the worst record in the Pac-12. After the introduction of new names in the offseason, next year may well be different.

The shortening of the MLB draft leaves college players who would have been drafted with scant opportunities to pursue their professional aspirations.

The Bears will aim to get their offensive gears turning against the USF Dons this weekend with hopes of flipping the season’s script.