One committed to Arizona as a high school sophomore, more than three years before he would play for the Wildcats. Another pledged to the UA in the middle of the COVID shutdown, despite having never met the coaching staff in person. And another signed on a few weeks before the UA began its run to the 2021 College World Series.
Arizona will honor seven seniors this weekend against Utah during its final home series of the regular season, but those seniors fall into two distinct categories. Four of them (pitchers Raul Garayzar, Matthew Martinez and Julian Tonghini and infielder Richie Morales) are transfers who began their college careers elsewhere, while the other three—second baseman Garen Caulfield, left-handed pitcher Eric Orloff and first baseman/catcher Tommy Splaine—signed out of high school … but not for Chip Hale or anyone on the current UA staff.
Caulfield, Orloff and Splaine were part of Arizona’s 2021 recruiting class, only a fraction of which actually made it to campus after Jay Johnson left for LSU. But despite that unexpected change, none gave any consideration to playing elsewhere.
“I never had a second thought,” said Orloff, who enters the weekend 6th in school history with 84 pitching appearances.
Orloff, from the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Ill., preceded the influx of Midwest Wildcats under Hale and recruiting coordinator Trip Couch. Arizona wasn’t even a consideration as the COVID pandemic wiped out his junior season and limited his recruiting to video, yet that may have worked to his advantage.
“I was probably one of the only guys where COVID helped my recruiting process, because everything went digital,” said Orloff, who this season is 1-0 with a 2.70 ERA over 12 outings. “It’s actually interesting, I threw at a (Prep Baseball Report) ProCase, it was the first time an Arizona coach ever saw me throw. I threw 11 pitches, three strikeouts and committed three days later.”
Splaine committed to Arizona as a two-way player in December 2018, and in his signing day press conference Johnson said Splaine had “one of the best high school change-ups that frankly I’ve ever seen.” But Splaine only made two pitching appearances for the Wildcats, one in the 2022 home opener and the other late last season, instead starting out as Daniel Susac’s backup at catcher before getting moved to first base.
This season Splaine is hitting .270 with two home runs and 17 RBI and he’s also been hit by 10 pitches, giving him 39 HBP for his career. He’s one behind Donta Williams for 5th in school history.
“I guess I’m a guy that stands on the plate a little bit,” he said. “I guess growing up, especially in high school, my team was taught to wear the pitch a little bit more. So I guess I’m used to kind of just turning and not getting out of the way as much, but I’m just looking to try and get on the base any way possible.”
Splaine homered on the first pitch he saw as a freshman in 2022, smoking a solo shot off Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s AJ Blubaugh, who last month made his MLB debut with the Houston Astros. He said he talked with Hale shortly after he was hired in July 2021 and was quickly convinced he still wanted to go to Arizona, from where his father graduated.
“I knew Chip was a U of A guy, and we had complete trust in him, and he’s got a great background, and everyone that he brought in,” Splaine said. “I just had trust in what he was building, and I wanted to come here regardless.”
For Caulfield it wasn’t so much still wanting to come to Arizona after the coaching change, it was hoping the new staff wanted him. A junior college transfer who had both seasons at San Joaqin Delta College wiped out by COVID, he was recruited to the UA by then-pitching coach Nate Yeskie to provide infield depth and officially committed in May 2021.
Less than months later the only Division I school that was interested in a 5-foot-11 middle infielder who didn’t have any JUCO stats was going through a coaching change. But a holdover from the 2021 staff, Dave Lawn, still wanted Caulfield.
“I got to give credit to Dave Lawn, actually, for keeping me on board here when Chip wasn’t even hired,” Caulfield said. “I was kind of in a bad spot, with no other real opportunities, and potentially being a third-year JUCO guy, which I did not want to do.”
Caulfield will move into the top 10 in career games played at Arizona this weekend, having already cracked those lists for at-bats (805, 9th and sacrifice flies (tied for 6th). He wasn’t supposed to be part of the 2025 team, having gone through Senior Day last May, but after going undrafted he opted to use his final year of eligibility and is hitting .267 with three homers and 34 RBI while posting a career-best .979 fielding percentage.
“It was obviously very hard for him last year not getting drafted,” Hale said of Caulfield. “I think he had a great year for us, and was one of our leaders. And for him to come back and finish up here has been super important for us. He’s a true leader, captain on the field. We want to have him go out on on a high note.”
Hale expressed gratitude Wednesday for players like Caulfield, Orloff and Splaine sticking with him—and Arizona—when constant player movement has become the norm.
“In this time, in this day and age of college sports, it’s hard to get guys to stay,” Hale said. “Whether it’s not playing or not pitching, they want to go somewhere, they can find a place right away that they’re going to be a fit, or whether it’s money. If they have a good year, they might want to go search for more money. And these guys have been very solid, they’re going to earn their degrees, and I’m very proud of that.”
A chance for the offense to get right?
For the season, Arizona (33-15, 15-9 Big 12) is batting .282, which is slightly better than the .278 clip from 2024 but far worse than what was expected this season considering the veteran nature of the lineup. In Big 12 play the Wildcats are hitting just .263 which is third-worst in the conference.
The absence of Brendan Summerhill for 21 games overall (and 13 of the last 15 Big 12 games) has had a major impact on the offense. But even before Summerhill went down with a broken hand in late March the UA wasn’t tearing the ball off the cover.
“We’ve come to the realization that our offense is not what we thought it was going to be to start the year, and we’re going to have to figure out other ways to win,” Hale said. “We thought, after last year, going through some tough times with some young hitters, that we would be better for it this year. We thought the offense would lead the way. We talked about this from the start. I think we’ve had some clutch hitting along the way, and we won some conference games because of it, but overall, no. There’s a lot of things, and we still have a chance to do better. And it doesn’t matter, it’s not going to help their numbers, their season numbers, but they can have good numbers going into the playoffs.”
Sophomores Andrew Cain and Easton Breyfogle have both struggled in their second seasons, hitting .230 and .209, respectively, and both are below .200 in Big 12 play.
But Utah provides a chance to get hot going into the final week of the regular season at Houston and then the Big 12 Tournament. The Utes (18-25, 5-19) has a 6.08 team ERA that climbs to 7.30 in conference games, and they’re allowing eight runs per game on the road against Big 12 opponents with only one win.
“We feel like we have a great team and a great lineup, and we’ve had games where we’ve proven that, and we’ve had games that we wonder, what the hell is going on?,” Caulfield said. “It’s something we’re continuously trying to battle and just trying to go day by day and get everyone on the same page. Like our coaches say it takes one guy to hit a big double or a homer and start a rally and get some momentum back on our side. And I think we just need to have that approach going forward. It doesn’t take everyone to all click at the same time. It’s just it takes one guy to kind of turn things, to right the ship.”
Arizona holds a 68-21 record against Utah, including 21-14 when the teams were together in the Pac-12 from 2012-24. The Wildcats have swept the last three series with the Utes played at Hi Corbett Field.
Pitching and defense update
Arizona will use the same order of starting pitchers as last weekend against TCU, when it moved sophomore Owen Kramkowski to Friday and redshirt sophomore Collin McKinney to Saturday. Freshman Smith Bailey remains the Sunday starter despite a 6.15 ERA in eight Big 12 starts with the last two resulting in 10 runs allowed over seven innings.
At 53.2, Bailey has thrown the most innings by a UA true freshman since TJ Nichols (60.1) in 2021. He could be hitting a wall but the Wildcats are sticking with him because of, among other things, his demeanor.
“The one thing that is always good with him, he’s super mature, he’s easy to talk to,” Hale said. “Get into him a little bit if you have to, Kevin (Vance) or myself. I had a long conversation with him, just, hey you have to attack every pitch. These are great hitters you’re facing, and you let up a little bit, or you walk a guy, it’s really going to be tough to pitch out of it.”
What can help Bailey and all the pitchers is having solid defense behind them. And while Arizona has turned a league-best 44 double plays it’s also committed 25 errors in conference play, and in Tuesday’s 5-2 loss at Grand Canyon a pair of errors in the bottom of the 7th led to two runs after the Wildcats had tied it in the top of the inning.
“Offensively, we have not been able to make up for those kind of mistakes,” Hale said. “So we’re going to have to tighten up the defense.”
Teams are also starting to run more on Arizona, taking advantage of what could be a tired Adonys Guzman whose throws have started to sail on him. Guzman has started behind home plate 18 of the last 20 games and Hale said he may try to DH him once this weekend.
“Some of it has to do with the pitchers, too, the pitchers have to be better at holding runners,” Hale said. “I think sometimes, when he feels like the guy gets such a big jump, he rushes and his throw is not accurate.”
Standings and seeding considerations
D1Baseball had Arizona listed as the No. 16 seed in its latest NCAA Tournament projection on Tuesday, and while the loss at GCU—a top-90 RPI team on the road—probably doesn’t change that it drastically reduces the margin for error in order to maintain a host spot. The remaining teams on the regular season schedule can only hurt Arizona’s resume, as Utah is No. 138 in RPI and any losses would go down as Quad 4 defeats, while next weekend’s games at Houston (No. 90) will be Quad 2 results.
Arizona is 11-10 against Q1 opponents, the 11 wins tied for most of any non-SEC school, but a few of those wins could easily drop down to Q2. BYU, whom the UA took two of three from on the road, is at No. 59, and 60 is the cutoff between quadrants for road games, while the one win at No. 56 Texas Tech is also in jeopardy.
Same goes for neutral-site wins over No. 35 Mississippi State and No. 36 Texas A&M (the neutral cutoff is at 40).
Some current Q2 wins could become Q1, too, if some teams the Wildcats beat at home can move into the top 25. The Wildcats swept Cincinnat to open Big 12 play and the Bearcats are No. 39, while nonconference home wins over Kansas (No. 37) and ASU (No. 40) also have potential to improve.
There’s also the Big 12 standings to consider, particularly staying in the top four to get a bye into the conference tournament quarterfinals later this month in Arlington, Texas. The UA is tied with Kansas and TCU for third place, a game behind ASU and a game up on 6th-place Kansas State.
Sweeping the Utes would go a long way toward locking up a top-4 spot, especially since Kansas State and Kansas both still have to play first-place West Virginia.
“Let’s just worry about Friday,” Hale said. “This is a dangerous team. They’re gonna play their best baseball down here. It’s gonna be good hitting conditions, it’s gonna be hot, and they have a super good offense.”
Utah is currently two games back of 12th place, with only 12 of 14 teams making the Big 12 Tournament, so the Utes are playing for their postseason hopes this weekend.