Westmont Magazine Warrior Baseball Produces Major League Players

In his 12-year career as head coach at Westmont, Rob Ruiz has invigorated the Warrior baseball program, setting new records and sending athletes to the major leagues.

“We put our heads down and put the work in, then four or five years down the road, we hit that tipping point,” Ruiz says. “From there, we started winning games and accomplishing things never accomplished before.”

In June 2009, Ruiz took over a program with a historical record 220 games below .500. Russ Carr Field, still under renovation after the destructive 2008 Tea Fire, was nothing but dirt. Ruiz saw only endless opportunity.

“We’re not going to make excuses for all the things we don’t have,” Ruiz said that June. “We’re going to be grateful for what we do have and become great with it.”

Recruiting his longtime friend Tony Cougoule as the pitching coach, Ruiz began turning the program around.

In 2012, Westmont played in the GSAC tournament for the first time, winning its first GSAC tournament two years later. They set a new record for wins in 2015, (41-17), and became the first Warrior baseball team with multiple victories in the NAIA Opening Round. On May 13, 2015, one loss away from elimination in that round, left-handed pitch- er Andrew Vasquez fired seven innings of one-run ball while striking out 13 in a winning effort, buying the club one more day in the postseason.

Vasquez, a senior transfer from UCSB, posted a 2015 record of 7-1. The southpaw struck out 124 batters that season, the third most in Warrior history, and posted an ERA of 3.06 in 85.1 innings.

The Minnesota Twins drafted Vasquez in the 32nd round of the Major League Baseball June Amateur Draft, and he made his major league debut for the ball club in September 2018.

“I was down and out in my baseball career, and I was blessed with an opportunity at Westmont,” Vasquez says. “Coach Ruiz and Coach Cougoule welcomed me into the Westmont family and gave me another baseball life.”

Vasquez pitched in 10 big league games for the Twins from 2018 to 2019. He only returned to the major league mound when the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired him late in the 2021 season. He pitched twice in a three-game series with the Giants in San Francisco as the two rivals competed for first place in the division. The lefty threw two-thirds of an inning in a Friday game before firing a 1-2-3 eighth inning Sunday night. He struck out three Giants.

“After a rough 2019, I was struggling to get back to the big leagues,” Vasquez says. “Thinking back on that initial second chance from Westmont, I decided I wasn’t ever going to give up again. It’s hard to express everything that happened along the way, but a lot of it goes back to Westmont giving me that first second chance. It was the reason I decided to come back to baseball.”

“It has been so fulfilling to watch Andrew’s career unfold,” Ruiz says. “With his baseball career nearly ending in college, he climbed the ranks of minor league baseball to the big leagues. It’s a remarkable story.”

Freshman Michael Stefanic also played on the 2015 Warrior baseball team. He was named to the All-GSAC team and earned a GSAC Gold Glove at second base. The Boise native hit .337 and collected 63 hits that year, adding 212 more hits in the next three seasons to set a Westmont record with 275.

“Mike embodies everything gritty in the game of baseball,” Ruiz says. “He is a tough out at the plate and an intuitive defender — and he is the same guy every day.”

When Stefanic didn’t get drafted after graduating in 2018, he made a tape of himself playing and sent it to members of all 30 MLB teams. Weeks later, he received a call from Mike Gallego, then director of baseball development for the Angels.

An article in The Athletic quotes Gallego as saying, “To be honest with you, we were basically looking for some bodies at the time. And we were honest with him. When he got into town, we basically told him, ‘We don’t know long this is going to last.’”

The Angles signed Stefanic in July 2018. That year in Rook- ie Ball, he hit .351, then .333 the next year in Low-A. After COVID-19 canceled the minor league season in 2020, he hit .345 in 2021 in Double-A ball then .341 for the Salt Lake City Bees, the Angels Triple-A affiliate.

“He has a million people in his corner because he did things and treated people the right way,” Ruiz says. “I hope he gets an opportunity in the big leagues — it’s difficult to argue with the numbers he has put up.”

In 2018, sophomore Bailey Reid had pitched just 25.1 innings as a right-hander. He originally tried out as a third baseman at a Westmont prospect camp. After watching him field grounders and throw across the diamond, Coach Cougoule predicted Reid would never play third base for the Warriors but would throw 95 miles-per-hour pitches someday.

In 24 bullpen appearances in 2019 and 2020, Reid never gave up a single earned run. He developed into one of the most dominant bullpen arms in Westmont history due in large part due to Cougoule’s mentoring. The coach used methods from the Driveline Baseball program years before it became popular in the big leagues.

As Cougoule helped players such as Vasquez and Reid develop their talent, he attracted attention from the major leagues. In early 2020, he left Westmont after 10 years to become a pitching coach in the Chicago Cubs organization. This year, he served as a pitching coach for the South Bend Cubs, a High-A affiliate. “Building a program with a childhood friend and teammate for 11 years at Westmont was an unbelievable experience,” he says.

Reid signed a contract with the Chicago Cubs in 2020 after limiting batters to just six hits in his final 22 innings of collegiate baseball. Beginning in 2021 in Low-A, Reid then went to South Bend and to play under Cou- goule once again.

“From recruiting a player at age 16 and seeing him develop through college to now being in the same dug- out in professional ball is surreal,” Cougoule says. “Seeing his growth and getting to interact again on a daily basis has been extremely rewarding.”

“Getting to link up with Cougoule again has been pretty cool,” Reid says. “It’s something I’ll always re- member.”

Since 2010, the Warriors are 84 games above .500, and they’ve won two GSAC Championships. But Ruiz knows the legacy of the program goes beyond the numbers.

“Our program stands for a lot more than total draft picks or trophies,” says Ruiz, now the winningest Warrior baseball coach. “It’s rewarding to see high quality people like Andrew, Mike and Bailey come out of our program and succeed at the highest levels of our game.

“Ultimately, we know they embody the Warrior way. Westmont baseball is fortunate to have them representing our program as they continue to build their careers.”