‘He was a dude.’ Los Banos freshman named Western Athletic Conference baseball MVP

Shawn Jansen
·2 min read

Los Banos High School baseball coach Patrick Fuentes has promoted freshmen to the varsity team before, but not as two-way players.

“I’ve called up freshmen to pitch, but that’s all they did,” Fuentes said.

Julian Cazares was the exception this year.

Cazares pitched, played shortstop and hit fifth in the lineup, and he excelled. Cazares was selected as the Western Athletic Conference Most Valuable Player by the conference coaches.

“It’s hard to put expectations on a freshman,” said Fuentes, who was named WAC Coach of the Year. “In the fall he showed he’s a pretty special 14-year-old and kept getting better every day. As the season went on he was a dude.”

Cazares compiled a 5-1 record with a 0.38 ERA on the mound during conference games. He struck out 58 hitters in just over 37 innings pitched.

Cazares also finished with a .511 batting average with 16 RBIs and 16 runs scored in 14 WAC games.

“It felt really good to be named MVP as a freshman,” Cazares said. “ I was a little shocked when I found out because there were some good players in the league. It was exciting to play varsity as a freshman.”

Cazares was confident he could compete at the varsity level right away.

“I felt comfortable,” he said. “I felt I was going to play at the level of competition I should be playing at.”

Mountain West senior Roy Gardner was named the Pitcher of the Year. Gardner compiled a 4-1 record with a 0.62 ERA in six WAC appearances. He struck out 60 batters in just under 34 innings pitched.

The all-WAC first-team selections were Cameron Valentine (Mountain House), John Stephens (Mountain House), AJ Duenez (Lathrop), Kayson Welch (Los Banos), Omare Cross (Lathrop), Ethan Kessler (Beyer), Julian Mejia (Los Banos), Tyrell Jenkins (Pacheco), Jasper Tovar (Lathrop), Joshua Prestridge (Ceres), Raymond Chacon (Johansen), Andrew Towe (Beyer), Dominic Tacheira (Davis) and Joshua Reynaga (Beyer).

The second-team selections were Kai Mays (Los Banos), Tyler Jordan (Mountain House), Adrian Zuniga (Lathrop), Brayden Clark (Ceres), Daniel Castro (Davis), Jorge Gonzalez (Ceres), Anthony Gallardo (Lathrop), Francisco Cornejo (Pacheco) and Aiden Pikas (Pacheco).