Brooks Hatch

Baseball America magazine named Oregon State’s  Pat Casey its Coach of the Decade, named the Beavers the No. 2 Team of the Decade, and named ex-Beavers star Jacoby Ellsbury as its Outfielder of the Decade on Thursday.

Here’s a link to the awards, which were determined in a vote of 150 Division I Head coaches. And here’s a link to OSU’s release.

And here’s a preview of our story, which will appear online later today and in Friday’s print editions.

The meteoric rise of the Oregon State baseball program was recognized on Thursday when Pat Casey was named the Coach of the Decade, the Beavers were named as the No. 2 Program of the Decade, and Jacoby Ellsbury was named as the Outfielder of the Decade by Baseball America magazine.

Now in his 16th year with the Beavers, Casey edged out Augie Garrido of Texas in the Coach of the Decade voting and Ellsbury (2003-05) edged Stanford’s Carlos Quentin for Outfielder of the Decade. Texas topped the Beavers for Team of the Decade honors.

Voting was done by the coaches. Every Division I head coach received a ballot; 150 responded.

Casey credited his players and assistant coaches, the fans and OSU administrators for the award, calling it a “collaborative” honor.

“I mean that. I just don’t think people do things by themselves very often when you have a lot success in a team sport,” he said, speaking before Thursday’s practice at the Truax Indoor Center. “It’s great recognition for our program and our university.”

The Beavers won two NCAA championships, two Pacific-10 Conference championships and appeared in three College World Series and four NCAA tournaments from 2000-09. They were 356-213 (.626) overall, 29-8 in NCAA tournament games and 11-4 at the College World Series, and had just one losing season (2003).

Forty-two Beavers who played at least one season from 2000-09 turned professional. Six advanced to the major leagues (Ellsbury, Brian Barden, Mike Ekstrom, Eddie Kunz, Mark McLemore, Chris Wakeland) and one played in the Olympics (Barden). OSU also doubled the size, and added many amenities, to Goss Stadium.

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Casey said such recognition is another accomplishment on the resume it can show prospective recruits.

“Absolutely,” he said. “We talk about Oregon State baseball, from the ground up, what players do when they get here, and where they are when they leave. And we have an unbelievable number of kids we can actually talk about.”

Casey said the Beavers talk about their program, don’t degrade others, and sell what is and what has been, not what could be.

“We don’t have to tell (recruits), ‘We’re gonna have a good team,’ or, ‘We’re gonna have good players.’  We’ve had them.”

Casey can point to undrafted high school players who became first-round selections (Mitch Canham, Eddie Kunz), and to players who significantly improved their draft status after playing here (Ellsbury, Dallas Buck, Darwin Barney, to name a few).

“That’s a tribute to your strength guy, your trainer, your coaches, to the commitment by the athletic department,” he said. “We’ve had some unbelievable good things happen to us – the Goss family, Buck and Ellsbury not signing, Barden coming up here to play in a tournament so we could see him play.

“Most of the time when organizations have success – compared to some that don’t – is when opportunities are there, sometimes they’re never seized. We were fortunate enough to seize the opportunities when we had them,  whether it was building a new stadium, getting a player nobody thought we could get, or putting together a schedule that we’d only dream about 15 years ago.”

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Finally, here’s a bullet-point list of OSU baseball accomplihments during the decade:

• Oregon State won 356 games from 2000-09, an average of 35.6 wins per season.
• The Beavers won 118 Pacific-10 Conference games, or an average of almost 12 a season. The Beavers won the Pac-10 title in 2005 and 2006.
• Oregon State went to four NCAA Regionals and won 29 games in the postseason, including 11 in the College World Series.
• Oregon State saw 50 total MLB draft selections over the 10 seasons, including three players in the first round. Of those 50, 17 came in the top 10 rounds of the draft.
• At least one player was selected All-Pac-10 First Team each season. Jacoby Ellsbury (2005) and Cole Gillespie (2006) earned Most Valuable Player honors in consecutive seasons. Darwin Barney (2005) and Chris Kunda (2006) earned Pac-10 Fielder of The Year honors.
• Mitch Canham earned Academic All-American honors in 2007.
• Kevin Gunderson (2005), Jonah Nickerson (2005), Darwin Barney (2006) and Kevin Rhoderick (2008) all played for the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team. Brian Barden (2008) played for USA Baseball at the 2008 Olympics.
• Five players who played for the Beavers in the decade have gone on to play for a Major League club: Ellsbury, Barden, Eddie Kunz, Mark McLemore, and Mike Ekstrom.

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