(Photo: Maya Diaz/WCSN)
WCSN writer Keenan Vaughn also contributed to this article.
As the fifth-winningest program in collegiate baseball history, Arizona State’s standard has been well-established. Between five College World Series Championships and 3,033 wins, the benchmark on the diamond has remained consistently high, but it hasn’t always been met in recent years.
After three years of watching the NCAA tournament from the sidelines – the longest such drought in program history – 2025 represented a step back in the right direction for the Sun Devils, making an appearance in the Los Angeles regional.
Head coach Willie Bloomquist entered his fifth season at the helm with the highest expectations for the program in recent memory. However, as the standard begins to rise again, so do the challenges the team must navigate during the new season.
Here are three storylines to follow throughout the 2026 season:
Willie Bloomquist’s extension – Ignatovsky
2025 was easily the best season of Bloomquist’s tenure leading the Sun Devils. After finishing below .500 in year one and failing to make the NCAA Tournament in years two and three, year four offered salvation.
ASU opened up the proceedings in LA in strong fashion, defeating UC Irvine, but ran into the buzzsaw that was No. 15 UCLA before it allowed the Anteaters to enact their revenge in the elimination bracket,sending the Sun Devils home.
Bloomquist and Co. didn’t just want to make it to the tournament for a quick hello and goodbye; it wanted to make it all the way to the top step of Omaha. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but it was still a step in the right direction.
ASU Athletic Director Graham Rossini saw enough of an improvement to extend Bloomquist’s contract, which was originally set to expire after this upcoming season, through the 2028 season.
The contract extension provides stability for Bloomquist and players alike, allowing all members of the team to focus on the games.
“I think it’s awesome,” redshirt junior second baseman and team captain Nu’u Contrades said. “Guys that come here as freshmen know that he’s going to be here for a couple years. That kind of gives recruits stability in knowing that their coach isn’t going to leave anytime soon.”
Bloomquist’s extension wasn’t the only investment that the athletic department made into the baseball program leading up to the 2026 season. ASU opted into revenue sharing and increased its scholarship allotment to 34, the new NCAA maximum, after years of it being set at 11.7.
ASU used the increase to its advantage in the offseason, landing 27 newcomers, including key transfers like junior shortstop PJ Moutzouridis, fifth-year outfielder and reigning Mountain West co-player of the year Dean Toigo and senior right-hander Kole Klecker, who all appeared in Baseball America’s top 100 transfer portal rankings.
“It’s been extremely helpful,” Bloomquist said. “It gets us into a lot of those conversations that we couldn’t get in before…Are we there yet against some of the big boys? From that standpoint, it’s always going to be an uphill battle, but we are definitely in a much better position than we have been the past few years.”
With new doors opened and big fish landed, all while having the peace of mind that stability brings, the Sun Devils should theoretically be stronger than ever under Bloomquist. Still, the games need to be played on the field, and the 2026 season will offer the first look at how these investments will play out.
SEC Opponents – Vaughan
Coinciding with the widespread hope for the program to return to prominence, ASU faces its most difficult non-conference schedule in the Bloomquist era.
This is in large part due to six games on the schedule featuring opponents from the SEC, a conference that accounts for 11 spots in the preseason top 25 poll.
“I think we definitely have a chip on our shoulder, and I think that’s definitely what this team really needs just because, as us being the underdogs, I guess you could say we’re really ready to play,” redshirt sophomore infielder Austen Roellig said.
The Sun Devils’ first road trip of the season reaches Norman, Okla., for a two-game series against the Sooners on Feb. 24 and 25. These two squads haven’t faced each other since the 2008 NCAA tournament, when ASU defeated Oklahoma twice at Packard Stadium.
The Sooners have made 11 tournament appearances since to prove themselves as an upper-tier program, but the 2026 season sees them projected to finish 14th in the SEC preseason coaches poll as a result of an entirely new weekend rotation.
Two days later, ASU heads to Arlington, Texas, to take part in the Amegy Bank College Baseball Series from Feb. 27 to March 1.
First on the docket is No. 4 Mississippi State, an opponent the Sun Devils last saw in 2022 when they took one of three in Starkville. Two-way athlete and third-team All-American Noah Sullivan and preseason second-team All-American third baseman Ace Reese look to help new coach Brian O’Connor restore one of collegiate baseball’s premier programs.
No. 15 Tennessee lies ahead next, and despite the departure of head coach Tony Vitello, the 2024 national champions still boast an extremely talented roster. Preseason third-team All Americans in right-handed pitcher Brady Frederick and third baseman Henry Ford, alongside 20 other transfer portal additions, make the Volunteers a serious threat.
ASU’s final opponent in Arlington is No. 25 Texas A&M, a team looking to rebound after a postseason-less 2025. Preseason second-team All-American designated hitter and Maryland transfer Chris Hacopian, alongside third-team All-American Caden Sorrell, slugged 26 combined home runs last season, and the Aggies retained several arms from a pitching staff that posted the country’s 20th-best ERA.
The Sun Devils and Aggies also have previous history facing each other in Arlington as the 2024 Kubota Baseball Series saw the eventual College World Series final runner-up defeat ASU twice by a 14-5 margin.
“I’ve played my fair share of games at Globe Life, it’s an awesome park, awesome venue,” senior right-handed pitcher Kole Klecker said. “It’s going to be a challenge. But you know, we’re up for it, and it makes it so much better to play at the Rangers stadium.”
It’ll be a whole two months after the trip to Arlington until ASU concludes its SEC gauntlet with a midweek road game at Missouri. Although the Tigers are projected to finish last in their conference, they put together the No. 6 transfer portal class over the offseason and have a previous history of upending the Sun Devils when they defeated Bloomquist in his inaugural season.
Bloomquist has made it evident that he believes in his team’s ability to compete this season, and six games against the conference responsible for the last six national champions is as good a litmus test as the fifth-year manager could hope for.
“We’re going to be tested early and often throughout our non-conference schedule and our conference schedule,” Bloomquist said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us for sure, but strength of schedule won’t be an issue this year for sure.”
Big 12: big problem? – Ignatovsky
A season after finishing fifth in the Big 12 regular season, ASU finds itself slotted in at No. 4 in both the Big 12 preseason head coaches poll and Baseball America’s projected Big 12 standings.
Rankings, of course, are partially subjective, and Bloomquist, for one, doesn’t care much about what others have to say at this point in the season.
“I only care where we’re ranked at the end of the year,” Bloomquist said. “Rankings are rankings, you’ve seen it in every sport, a preseason (poll) ranks somebody high, low, and it always flip-flops.”
To be on the right side of those flip-flops and end the season ranked above the rest, however, Bloomquist and his team will need to get the job done against the teams they’re supposed to beat, and steal some wins against the four squads the industry has above them: West Virginia, No. 24 Arizona and No. 10 TCU.
WVU was able to walk away with the Big 12 regular-season championship a season ago, off the back of extremely solid pitching and offense. The Mountaineers didn’t prevent the most runs or score the most runs, but did finish in the top five in both categories.
The Mountaineers lost a plethora of talent to the professional ranks, but retooled in the transfer portal, nabbing two of the best DII pitchers available in the form of sophomore RHP duo Chansen Cole (their newly named Friday starter) and Dawson Montesa, Baseball America’s No. 69 transfer portal player.
Despite being two storied programs, ASU and WVU have never faced off on a baseball diamond. That’ll change March 27, when the Sun Devils host the defending champions.
“It’ll be (a) good test for us to see where we’re at,” Contrades said. “We’ll just go out and compete with them.”
Arizona got more love from Big 12 coaches than Baseball America, being the No. 2 ahead of WVU in the Big 12 Poll, but slotting behind at No. 3 in Baseball America’s projected standings. No matter how you cut it, the archrival Wildcats are a dangerous opponent.
They showed as much a season ago, defeating the Sun Devils in three out of four meetings before going on to win the Big 12 tournament, riding that wave of momentum all the way to an appearance in Omaha.
Arizona suffered a massive blow on Tuesday, with the program announcing that senior RHP Tony Pluta, an All-American closer in 2025, will miss the season after suffering a UCL injury. Still, there’s upside to be found among Wildcat arms.
Junior RHP Owen Kramkowski, who was fifth in innings pitched (92) and eighth in strikeouts (90), will return to the bump as a Big 12 preseason team honoree. The Wildcats were also able to land a commitment from Perfect Game’s No. 1 prospect in the state of Arizona, RHP Jack Lafflam, who finds himself on Baseball America’s Preseason College Freshman of the Year Watch List.
“We don’t like them, they don’t like us,” Klecker said. “It makes it that much more exciting. … Those are games that are circled on the schedule for us.”
By far, the Big 12 team that’s receiving the most hype is TCU, earning a near-unanimous selection atop the Big 12 Preseason Poll, losing out on just one vote, due to their well-represented star power.
Horned Frogs took up four of the 19 spots on the Big 12 Preseason team, the most of any program. Two of the selections were even unanimous, with those honors going to Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year, sophomore outfielder Sawyer Strosnider, and Big 12 Preseason Pitcher of the Year, junior RHP Tommy LaPour.
Strosnider was the Big 12 Freshman of the Year a season ago after putting up 11 home runs and a .350/.420/.650 slash line, good for the 10th-best OPS in the conference. On the mound, LaPour recorded a 3.09 ERA and 88 strikeouts in 90.1 innings pitched, the second, 10th and sixth best marks in the Big 12.
Two-way sophomore star Noah Franco and junior outfielder Chase Brunson joined Strosnider and LaPour on the preseason team, while freshman infielder Lucas Franco (no relation) was picked to be the Preseason Freshman of the Year following a No. 51 national ranking from Perfect Game.
TCU doesn’t just have talent; it’ll be looking for revenge after losing a three-game series to ASU – a series where the Sun Devils outscored the Horned Frogs 40-23 – a season ago. Klecker watched that series from the other side and, after transferring to ASU, is confident that it can pull off a similar result again.
“I think we’re right there with them,” Klecker said. “I think we’re a talented team as well. It really just comes down to who plays the best game-by-game, and just taking it day-by-day, just kind of staying in our process.”
The Big 12 slate might look daunting on paper, but as ASU’s football team proved in 2024, there’s a reason that games are played out on the field
