Vulcans baseball ace: ‘It can be a very cruel game’

A lost season comes to an end this weekend for the University of Hawaii-Hilo baseball team, but don’t expect it to be merciful.

Mercy hasn’t been around since the first game of the season back on Feb. 13 when fifth-year senior Jordan Kurokawa pitched a glorious complete game against UH-Manoa, allowing just two hits, while striking out seven in a big neon, 1-0 victory over the Division I Rainbows.

It’s pretty much been straight down a slippery hill strewn with broken glass ever since.

“It’s tough,” coach Kallen Miyataki said before practice the other day, “really tough. After a season like this, part of you wants to just get it over with.”

The Vulcans are 6-26 in the Pacific West Conference, 7-31 overall at the end of a week in which the team passed a mournful milestone in an 11-4 loss at San Francisco State on Tuesday. It was the 100th loss for Miyataki, in his third season, dropping his record to 32-100.

He was a July hire in 2014, too late have any tangible impact on a depleted roster and the task of recruiting to a school with a minimalist budget has been a major issue.

This weekend, the six seniors — Jordan Kurokawa, Will Cleary, Jordan Kumasaka, Sean Nearhoof, Yoshinori Tanaka and David Moody — will all get their last opportunities to make a contribution before the season is relegated to the record books.

“We all try to keep our spirits up, everybody tries to give everybody else a lift, but it can be a very cruel game,” said Kurokawa, a possible selection in the Major League Baseball draft, June 9-11. “It gets to the point where you have to pick yourself up and just keep battling.”

Kurokawa was the Player of the Year last summer for the Top Speed team in the Golden State Collegiate League, where his teams was 43-6, almost a reversal of the Vulcans’ record this season.

“I wasn’t ready for that,” Kurokawa said, “I really thought we could do more, but this is difficult, it’s tough to keep a program going when it can’t win 10 games in a 40-game season.”

The most notable memories of the season involved Kurokawa’s opening game gem and a bizarre scene March 24 at Fresno Pacific in a 13-4 win behind the senior right-hander who attracted “at least 20,” according to Kurokawa or “maybe two dozen” professional scouts, in the estimation of Miyataki. Two scouts canceled plans they had elsewhere to fly in to Fresno for an up close look at Kurokawa, 23, older than most players in the draft.

“I’ve never experienced anything like that,” Kurokawa said, describing how scouts with their radar guns collected in an ‘L’ shape around the visitors bullpen before the game when he went out to warm up. “Every pitch I threw, you could see all these (radar) guns lift up and point toward the ball, then they would drop down and (the scouts), would make notes on my velocity.

“I was charged up,” he said, “I was touching 94 (mph), in the pen and yeah, I should have backed off a little and saved it for the game.”

Miyataki felt his ace overthrew in the bullpen to impress the scouts, accounting for an off start on the mound. Kurokawa gave up four runs in the first two innings, then settled own and threw five shutout innings to collect the win.

“I learned a lot that night,” he said. “I realized I was rushing my delivery, which is usually kind of long and smooth, so once I realized that I was able to settle down. I hope they saw something they liked.”

Kurokawa is 3-6 with a 3.41 earned run average, those three wins representing half of all the conference wins the Vulcans were able to collect this season. He will pitch the second game Saturday night at Wong Stadium against Hawaii Pacific after Moody (3-5, 4.27) makes his final collegiate start in the opening game at 3 p.m.

Sunday’s season-ending doubleheader is scheduled for a noon start, with sophomore Eric Vega (0-8, 3.02), the hard-luck starter this year, pitching the first game. Miyataki will choose between junior Morgan West (0-3, 7.41), and Kumasaka (1-3, 5.49) in the final game.