Don’t ask head baseball coach Ray Birmingham about his UNM baseball program.
“It’s not my program,” he said. “It’s our program.”

Birmingham is entering his third year as the Lobos commander in chief, and at the team’s annual preseason media day Friday, Birmingham said his expectations are high, and the team will continue to have the success it’s enjoyed in the past two years.

And that ascent to the top begins on Tuesday, when the Lobos will square off in a five-game intrasquad series. The Cherry-Silver Series splits up the 35-man Lobo roster and will determine the roster for the 2010 season.

“Cherry and Silver — (it’s about) getting after it,” Birmingham said. “We have 42 guys right now, and so there are seven on the bubble. This is the chance for them to move up and make sure they make the squad. It’s highly competitive, but it’s always been competitive.”

And to Birmingham, competition breeds better athletes. In the long run, Birmingham said, to be the best, you have to beat the best.

The Lobos’ schedule, too, reflects that line of reasoning. UNM opens the 2010 season Feb. 19 at Texas.

The Longhorns are the national runner-up after a three-game two-step with the eventual NCAA champions — the Louisiana State Tigers.

“We open with Texas, and that’s by design,” Birmingham said. “We’re negotiating with North Carolina right now to open with them the next year. We’re putting Oklahoma, USC and Arizona (on our schedule). We’re putting those people on our schedule, because we plan on being where I said we have always planned on being. We’re going to get to Omaha someway or another.”

But though the 2010 Lobos have plenty of promise, they will be the most youthful group under Birmingham.

“We have more potential on this team than we ever had since I have been here,” he said. “I think probably in the pitching depth, it’s as good as it’s ever been.”
Senior center fielder Max Willet said the team has leadership because of the system Birmingham’s put in place.

“You get comfortable with the guys you are out there with,” he said. “And the more comfortable you are with the actual guys — you kind of know where the range is, what they like to do and where they like to play the ball.”

Although the Lobos lost four .400-plus hitters from the 2009 season, making up for their loss of offense in the upcoming season won’t be difficult, Birmingham said.

“Our offense is never going to be lacking and we’re always going to be an offensive club,” he said. “But good pitching stops good hitting. That’s the way baseball has been for the last 200 years, so we got to pitch. I think the makeup of this club is going to be pitching depth.”

And the pitching is going to have to help continue to get the Lobos national recognition, as well as promote the Mountain West Conference as a baseball league.

But to earn a national reputation, UNM will have to get over one conference speed bump: Texas Christian University. The Lobos have run into the Horned Frogs the last two years in MWC baseball tournament — and lost both times.

“The door to the top is through TCU,” Birmingham said. “TCU is as good a baseball team as there is in the country. They clobbered Cal-State Fullerton last year early in the season, and they clobbered Mississippi who was a nationally ranked team.”