Bethune-Cookman’s baseball team plays in the second-weakest conference in Division I, runs on a shoestring budget and its home games draw an average of 87 fans.
And the powerful big-money programs of the Southeastern Conference should want no part of the Wildcats right now.
The small private school in Daytona Beach, Florida, is the pride of historically Black colleges and universities ranks after going on the road and knocking off a nationally ranked SEC team two weeks in a row.
The Wildcats posted a 13-7 victory Tuesday night against the Florida Gators, No. 7 in the Baseball America ratings. That followed a 10-7 win over the defending national champion LSU Tigers, who were No. 24 by D1Baseball.com when they met April 7.
While college baseball observers look at the wins as upsets, eighth-year coach Jonathan Hernandez would prefer his players not.
“Our program is playing high-caliber baseball right now,” he said, “and it’s not new to the program.”
The Wildcats returned almost their entire lineup from a year ago, when they won the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament to earn an NCAA regional bid for the first time under Hernandez. They’re 26-11 overall after beating Florida and in a three-way tie for first in the SWAC at 12-3.
The 40-year-old Hernandez said his goal is not for the Wildcats just to make the NCAA Tournament but to win when they get there. He knows the odds are stacked against him.
While the SEC programs his team just beat operate with budgets in the millions of dollars, his runs on a just a few hundred thousand. Hernandez has a skeletal staff, so he arranges team travel and meals himself and even conducts the mandatory pregame bat testing that’s typically done by an administrator.
Hernandez has 13 scholarships, more than the NCAA limit of 11.7 that was in place prior to this year but far from the current maximum of 34.
Hernandez said university leaders have told him there soon would be some money available for revenue sharing with players. In the meantime, there’s opportunities for them to earn money through name, image and likeness — “just enough for some guys to buy groceries or a tank of gas,” he said.
The program’s bottom line, according to Hernandez: “We have to think outside the box because we can’t afford the box.”
Hernandez’s roster-building strategy relies not on the transfer portal but on a pipeline of players who come from junior colleges via other countries. The Wildcats have a total of 11 players from Aruba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia and the Dominican Republic in addition to 24 Americans, including 22 from Florida.
“When it comes to international baseball,” Hernandez said, “we’re viewed as the Florida, as the Miami, as the big program, so to speak, especially in Latin America.”
Andrey Martinez, who homered and doubled twice in the win over Florida, comes from Colombia and was among five non-American players in the lineup. Justin Morales, who pitched one-hit relief over the last 2 2/3 innings, is from Aruba and pitched for the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic.
More opportunities against power-conference opponents await. The Wildcats play nationally ranked Big 12 contender UCF home and away over the next month.
“As long as we play clean defense and have timely hitting and put our guys in successful positions, that’s pretty much what our guys base everything on,” Hernandez said. “It’s obviously big playing against LSU and Florida and the midweek gantlet that we go through. The big thing is having the confidence to compete and play at a high level, which they’ve done.”
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