Michael Lev: Having doubts about Chip Hale amid UA’s slow start? Have a little patience instead

No one is happy about the way this season has started for Chip Hale’s Arizona baseball team.

Least of all Chip Hale himself.

The man who has played more games in a Wildcat uniform than anyone in program history is preaching patience as Year 3 of his coaching regime takes root. He knows it’s in short supply, particularly among fans who’ve cheered the UA all the way to Omaha.

They are an impatient lot by nature. We all are.

“I don't blame them,” Hale said after Sunday’s 14-3 victory over Arizona State that prevented a Sun Devil sweep and ended Arizona’s four-game losing streak. “I'm a fan too. It bothers me that we lose games, and we lose to ASU two out of three.

“But all we can do here is move on to the next day and have the best day we can. Today was a great day. And Tuesday's gonna be a dogfight against Grand Canyon.”

Arizona is 8-10 entering the GCU game. It sure feels like unfamiliar territory. When was the last time the Wildcats were under .500 this deep into March?

You have to go back to 2019. On March 31 of that year — a day that will live in UA baseball infamy — Arizona lost to ASU 17-16 in Phoenix. It was the Wildcats’ seventh consecutive defeat, and it dropped their record to 13-14.

Many of the comments I receive on social media about Hale assert that a program should be on its way by a coach’s third year. Well, that seven-game skid happened midway through Jay Johnson’s fourth year. The Wildcats didn’t make the NCAA Tournament that season or the previous one.

Two years later, Arizona advanced to the College World Series for the second time in Johnson’s tenure. He was doing work behind the scenes. No one in college baseball hits the recruiting trail harder. He was building a juggernaut.

Between 2018 and ’20, Arizona reeled in three recruiting classes ranked in the top-20 nationally by Perfect Game. They included players such as Mac Bingham, Tony Bullard, Chase Davis, Daniel Susac and Austin Wells. The latter three became first-round picks in the MLB Draft.

The single biggest complaint I hear about Hale is that he isn’t an effective recruiter. That notion has fans concerned about the long-term viability of the program under his watch.

I’ll concede that it was a worry when Dave Heeke hired Hale to replace Johnson in July 2021. Although a Wildcat through and through, Hale returned to his alma mater from MLB. He hadn’t coached a single college baseball game, let alone recruited any would-be college baseball players.

The early returns were mixed at best. The 2022 signing class, Hale’s first, earned a No. 34 national ranking from PG. The small ’23 class came in at No. 96 — although outfielder Easton Breyfogle, among others, looks like a keeper. That class also featured right-hander Blake Wolters, who never made it to campus, instead signing with the Kansas City Royals for $2.8 million.

The past two classes? Better. The ’24 class is ranked 34th, the ’25 class 38th. Johnson’s first two classes were ranked 38th and 30th, respectively.

It’s an inexact science to say the least, but it’s the best basis of comparison that we have. Those classes, at least on paper, are all in the same ballpark.

Is Hale as good a recruiter as Johnson? No. But I would argue that no one is.

Are Hale and his staff — led by Trip Couch, who previously tussled for recruits in the SEC at South Carolina — trending in the right direction? Consecutive top-40 classes suggest as much.

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Whether the highly rated arms atop Arizona’s ’24 class — Mason Russell of Queen Creek Casteel and Smith Bailey of Peoria Mountain Ridge — ever enroll at Arizona remains to be seen. As for the here and now, it’s easy to see why patience is required, or at least ought to be.

Not one player in the Wildcats’ starting nine is in the same role as last year. Mason White, Emilio Corona and Tommy Splaine were starters for most of 2023, but all are being asked to do more, whether that’s playing a different defensive position or batting higher in the lineup.

White, Brendan Summerhill, Adonys Guzman and Maddox Mihalakis are sophomores. Breyfogle is a freshman. Richie Morales is a junior, but he had played only four games at the Division I level before this year. Even junior Garen Caulfield wasn’t a full-time starter last season, having ceded the second base job to White (who’s now playing shortstop).

Unsurprisingly, that lineup — featuring a lot young and new players — has experienced wild swings a third of the way through the season.

In one five-game stretch from Feb. 23-March 1, Arizona struck out 17 or more times on four occasions. The Wildcats lost all four games. When they fanned only six times on Feb. 25 vs. San Diego, they won.

Then came the four-game skid that preceded Sunday’s game. Arizona managed only five total runs and 13 base hits. Inexplicable. But not entirely unexpected.

“We make immature mistakes,” Hale said. “What do I mean by that? I don't mean it's bad. It's just, when your kids are growing up and they’ve never been through things, they don't know how to handle it.”

He’s not just talking about the changeups that have baffled UA batters of late. He’s talking about situational baseball, which still matters even in the age of analytics.

As an example, Hale cited something hardly anyone would have noticed during Sunday’s game. The top of the third inning lasted forever, or at least felt that way. The pesky Sun Devils fouled off nine pitches against Cam Walty, scored three runs off him and forced a mid-inning pitching change. Dawson Netz got the Wildcats out of the inning, but even that took an eight-pitch at-bat.

Breyfogle led off the bottom half of the frame. He swung at the first pitch and flew out to center field. Hale would have preferred that Breyfogle take a pitch or two to give the UA defense a chance to rest. Hale didn’t think he had to give Breyfogle the take sign in that situation. Turns out he did.

“Those are things … we're learning about them,” Hale said. “And they're just learning on the fly.

“We’re getting there. We're still a work in progress. … It's a completely different club than last year.”

Hale isn’t making excuses. He wants to win. Like you, he wants to win right now.

But he understands that it’s a process and that that process takes time.

And patience.