How Willie Bloomquist has retooled ASU baseball following NCAA Tournament run

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(Photo: Ethan Ignatovsky/WCSN)

PHOENIX – The second Ole Miss outfielder Cannon Goldin crossed home plate, ending Arizona State’s season, head coach Willie Bloomquist was forced to turn his attention to building toward a new campaign. Even being two extra innings losses away from competing to go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, the Sun Devil skipper had his work cut out for him in the offseason.

While the Sun Devils’ 2026 season served as their second NCAA Tournament appearance in a row, breaking a three-year drought that dated back to before the Bloomquist era in 2021, it still failed to live up to the expectations ASU fans have grown accustomed to.

After the 2025 loss in the Los Angeles Regional, Bloomquist and his team expressed major disappointment that it was unable to match the standard set by the five national championships and 22 CWS appearances.

As for 2026, Bloomquist changed his tune.

“We didn’t get to where we wanted to ultimately get to,” Bloomquist said. “We’re close. I was extremely proud of the way our guys played in that regional. Left everything on the field, and that’s all I can ask for as a head coach. They performed well. They executed well. The scoreboard didn’t work out.

“Making it to a regional championship, and the amount of guys we sent to the draft after that, another successful draft for our guys. I think it’s just another step in the right direction for the program. And the hard part is now we gotta replenish all those guys and get our new crop ready to play and hopefully make another run.”

With the Milwaukee Brewers beginning their World Series run on Friday, many ASU fans’ memories have jogged back 30 years to current Brewers and former Sun Devil head coach Pat Murphy. Murphy led the Sun Devils to four CWS, most notably 1998, in which ASU fell in the final game to USC.

The star player on that team was a young utility player named Willie Bloomquist.

Though Bloomquist and his former boss have not spoken since the start of the 2026 MLB season, he hopes to take the lessons that Murphy taught him as a player and put them toward his team.

Nowadays, Murphy is a beloved figure around ASU. However, that was not always the case. During that 1998 season, many Sun Devil fans called for the now-legendary coach to be fired following some mid-season hurdles. Murphy’s demeanor in those moments is something Bloomquist says he would like to implement in his managerial style.

“At that point in time, he stayed calm and more relaxed and just let us go play,” Bloomquist said. “That’s when his leadership skills really shine through. And we just came together as a team and made obviously a great run into Omaha. But what I learned from that is that leaders often do the opposite of what everyone’s expecting them to do at that point in time, which he’s obviously tremendous at, and has, you know, gone on and done tremendous things at ASU.”

As for the players that can help Bloomquist continue to establish a winning culture, the Sun Devils brought back their most crucial one: third-year outfielder Landon Hairston. Hairston is coming with a lot of accolades. Hairston won Big 12 Player of the Year, was the Golden Spikes Award runner-up, and captured the Sun Devils’ single-season home run record with 28 in 2026.

Now, as Hairston enters his likely final season in college, Bloomquist will hope that he can bring more than just elite offensive numbers.

With 10 players from last season’s squad leaving for Major League Baseball, there is likely to be gaps in leadership. That’s where Hairston comes in.

“He’s his toughest critic,” Bloomquist said. “He wants to do well, and to me, that’s a sign of a kid that just wants to keep getting better., I’ve already talked to him just about, ‘hey man, you don’t have to repeat, you don’t have to repeat what you did last year. You just got to go play, and the only at bat that matters is the first one of the year, and be ready for that one, and put together good at bats, and the rest will take care of itself.’”

Who hits behind Hairston is the real question for Bloomquist’s squad. Last season, both Nu’u Contrades and Dean Toigo hit in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, combining for 41 home runs. When teams wanted to pitch around Hairston, they were unable to completely do so given the power right behind. With Contrades and Toigo both departed for the pros, players like fourth-year first baseman Dominic Smaldino and fourth-year third baseman Austen Roellig, and even third-year transfer Jackson Hotchkiss, will be looked upon to provide that offensive spark.

After some early struggles last season, Smaldino seemingly found his groove, knocking 19 home runs and becoming a consistent weapon in bringing balance to a previously top-heavy lineup. Roellig, on the other hand, provided more of a steady bat, slugging .416 with just three home runs.

“I think we focus on Landon so much,” Bloomquist said. “You need to focus on who’s going to protect Landon, who’s going to hit behind him, who’s going to hit in front of him. Those types of things where if you don’t have pieces built around him, then they’re just going to pitch around him all day long. Having Dom come back with 19 homers last year and 60, 65 RBIs, just that presence in the lineup. He’s another guy that can add some pop and add some protection along with Hotch.”

The Sun Devils pitching staff remains the biggest question with the departures of Cole Carlon, Kole Klecker, Sean Fitzpatrick and Derek Schaefer – either weekend starters or high-leverage bullpen arms. With the glaring holes, Bloomquist was forced to go into the transfer portal to deal with it.

Unfortunately for him, the ever-changing landscape of college baseball took another turn.

In the previous portal class, Bloomquist was able to leverage the full allotment of scholarships granted to him by ASU’s athletic department to land players like Klecker and Toigo. In contrast, this season, Bloomquist said that the scholarships hardly moved the needle for many of the players.

“A lot of programs have a lot more than we have when it comes to NIL and resources,” Bloomquist said. “But if we get the right type of kids, we can compete with anybody. … If you compare apples to apples, we were not even close to the payroll of the teams that we played in the postseason last year, and we took them tooth and nail right down to the wire.

“So what does that mean? It means we’re capable of doing it, but it also means that it just continues to get more challenging at the same time. In this crazy world of college sports, where it seems to revolve around payrolls and how much money you can raise and an arms race that continues to make my job and our job here at ASU extremely challenging.”

Instead, Bloomquist utilized the funds to lure in guys like Hotchkiss and fourth-year pitcher James Hays from Stetson, relying more heavily on his freshman class. One of the options that Bloomquist thought he landed, UNLV transfer Marcos Rosales, decided not to come to ASU, opting to stop baseball altogether to pursue a career in law enforcement.

Headlining the freshman class is first-year infielder and switch hitter Jet Berry and first-year pitcher Eli Curtis. The duo of first-years has seemingly stood out from the rest throughout fall ball, with Curtis even potentially in line to take over a weekend spot.

“He has thrown the ball extremely well and is competing for a weekend spot as I see it right now,” Bloomquist said. “There’s some exciting freshmen that are coming in and opening some eyes. And again, that’s a sign that things are going in the right direction.”