Mark Wasikowski passionately defends West Coast baseball teams: ‘People don’t get it’

In college baseball, the SEC is widely seen as the premier conference for baseball. The South, in general, is often seen as the premier region. However, Oregon Ducks head coach Mark Wasikowski recently pushed back against that, advocating for the West Coast.

Wasikowski, a California native who has been the head coach at Oregon since 2020, has coaching experience around the country. That’s given him perspective and helped him to advocate for those programs and players.

“Yeah, they’re good,” Wasikowski said. “People don’t get it. There’s really good baseball on the West Coast.”

Things like analytics can color the public’s views on a conference or region. Right now, nine of the top 10 teams in the RPI rankings come from the SEC or ACC. That includes the top five teams all being from the SEC. In the entire RPI Top 25, only three teams, including Oregon, come from the West Coast. Despite that, Wasikowski pushed back on that way of judging programs.

“They grumble about RPI and this that or the other,” Wasikowski said. “And you just go shoot. These guys — every club that we’ve played, I’ve heard about RPI this, RPI that. Yet, two of the teams that we’ve played in non-conference — we played four teams in non-conference. Oregon State one of them. The other three teams were two teams that are winning their league. In our non-conference strength of schedule is now hanging around 10 in the country. I think that’s a credit to a lot of West Coast schools. These guys are good, and they’re hanging around the middle part of their league. It’s hard out here on the West Coast.”

Still, by most rankings, the SEC and ACC dominate the discussion. The latest D1 Baseball Rankings have 10 SEC teams and five ACC schools. In total, there are six schools ranked from the West Coast, spread across four different conferences. Notably, every team ranked from the Big Ten comes from the conference’s West Coast additions. The West Coast teams in the Big Ten also make up four of the top five teams in the conference standings.

“There’s really good people and really good players,” Wasikowski said. “And I think that’s why the Southeastern Conference and maybe some of the other leagues have tried to hijack a lot of West Coast kids to go out there to that part of the country, because they see how good the baseball is out here.”

Wasikowski has been a head coach at two stops, Purdue and Oregon. Since getting to Oregon in 2020, he’s made the NCAA Regional all four years the postseason was held and has made the NCAA Super Regional in each of the last two seasons. So, there has been success for Wasikowski at Oregon. However, the College World Series hasn’t been won by a West Coast school since Oregon State in 2018.

In all of that, Wasikowski doesn’t know exactly what makes West Coast baseball. However, he did make sure to emphasize that the people are special.

“I don’t know. There’s just a lot of good players. There’s a lot of good teachers. Not saying there aren’t in other parts of the country. My career’s been all over the country, I guess,” Wasikowski said. “But my time that I spent on the West Coast, I have a lot of respect for all the coaches out here. Coach [Eric] Valenzuela for Saint Mary’s is a tremendous coach.”

Oregon wraps up the season series against Washington and Iowa. There, the Ducks look to build momentum for the postseason.