UA BASEBALL
Gimino: Guilmet could help UA break Pac-10 streak
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Player, school Rec. ERA IP BB K Opp BA
Adrian Alaniz, Texas 12-2 2.47 942/3 28 83 .208
Barry Enright, Pepperdine 12-4 1.73 125 13 85 .238
Preston Guilmet, Arizona 11-1 1.58 120 25 126 .200
Bryan Henry, Florida State 14.0 2.50 104 24 107 .232
Brian Matusz, San Diego 10-2 2.43 111 33 152 .206
Adam Mills, Charlotte 12-2 1.06 1272/3 24 132 .186
Kyle Nicholson, Texas A&M 11-1 1.95 110 18 91 .214
David Price, Vanderbilt 10-0 2.76 114 29 164 .204
Nick Schmidt, Arkansas 9-3 3.08 108 46 101 .211
Jacob Thompson, Virginia 10-0 1.46 982/3 25 93 .193
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It's been 15 years since Arizona won a Pacific-10 Conference baseball title. It's been 18 years since it had a pitcher as good as Preston Guilmet.
The second part could help change that first part this weekend.
The Arizona-Arizona State baseball rivalry means something again and isn't that happy news? That wouldn't have happened this season if not for Guilmet, whose earned run average sits at a ridiculously low 1.58, about two-thirds of a run better than anybody else in the Pac-10.
"He is the best pitcher around," said Arizona State coach Pat Murphy.
"Just look at the important numbers. He is untouchable. He doesn't give up hits, doesn't give up extra base hits and he is pitching in an offensive friendly ballpark. People are telling me he is great."
Now, Murphy certainly could be blowing a little smoke before the big three-game series that begins tonight in Tempe. He would never do that, right? But darn if he isn't right anyway.
Take a look at a couple of the gazillionaire pitchers to come out of the Pac-10 recently.
Mark Prior had a 1.69 ERA at USC in 2001.
Barry Zito led the league at 3.28 in 1999.
The league certainly hasn't gotten worse since then. The bottom teams are better than they used to be. Guilmet, a sophomore right-hander, has a better ERA than either of those guys.
As ESPN is especially fond of saying these days, Guilmet's stuff might not be as "nasty" as those two guys, but he's as nasty as he needs to be.
Washington coach Ken Knutson told the UW student paper after Guilmet threw a three-hit shutout against the Huskies on Friday night: "We had a hard time distinguishing which balls were spinning and which ones were straight."
Leading with a hard-breaking slider and the ability to pound the strike zone with four different pitches, Guilmet strikes out slightly more than a batter an inning and walks just about no one.
OK, he walks one guy for every five he strikes out.
"It's a credit to him because there are no bad teams in the Pac-10," UA coach Andy Lopez said.
"I don't think the Pac-10 gets enough credit in college baseball. It's as if nothing exists west of the Mississippi, and I don't say that without any kind of knowledge because for seven years I was in the SEC (at Florida)."
We'll see how much credit the Pac-10 gets when All-America awards are handed out next month. It's been a long stretch of desert since Arizona last had an All-American pitcher - Scott Erickson in 1989, who set a school record with 18 victories.
Guilmet, at 11-1, has the most wins in a season for a UA pitcher since then.
Guilmet should be the no-brainer pick for the league's pitcher of the year, but he has yet to navigate the Sun Devils' lineup, the most potent in the Pac-10.
Arizona (39-13 overall, 14-7 Pac-10) needs to sweep the three-game series against ASU (41-12, 17-4) to tie for the conference championship, although the Wildcats would win the tiebreaker and earn the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
Guilmet, who normally leads off the rotation on a Friday night, will pitch Thursday in the second game of the series. Not that the order matters much. Arizona needs to win all three games anyway.
"Someone is going to say, 'My gosh, why didn't you start him Wednesday?' " Lopez said.
"We'll we're going to throw him a day later. Personally, I wanted to keep him on his Friday rotation. I didn't want to deviate one bit. He really wanted to go on Wednesday, and we split the difference. He deserves some consideration of his opinion."
We're guessing when opposing batters are hitting only .200 against you, it's easier to have the coach's ear.
Here's one more stat for you: Guilmet has allowed only 21 extra-base hits to 470 batters faced.
Amazing.
But let's go back to Murphy for a second, who was a bit tongue in cheek when talking about Guilmet this week, saying, "How many innings did he pitch against us last year?"
OK, coach, as if you didn't know . . . Guilmet lasted only 5 1/2 innings in a 15-6 UA loss, allowing eight hits, eight earned runs and five walks.
"I was sick as a dog. I'm not going to lie," Guilmet said of that game.
"That Tuesday, I came down with something really bad, and the Friday game was a tough one. I got beat up a little bit out there."
And now?
"They will see something like what I have been doing all season," he said.
If Arizona can sneak out a win tonight, Guilmet can push the Cats one game closer to something we haven't seen since 1992 - that Pac-10 title.
Anthony Gimino's e-mail: agimino@tucsoncitizen.com. Wildcat sports: The blog to read to keep up on UA basketball, football, baseball, softball . . .
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