SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - With the first pitch of The Big West Baseball Championship less than 24 hours away, the conference has announced its 2025 award winners and All-Big West honorees. Seven UC Santa Barbara student-athletes have received acclaim, with LeTrey McCollum, Tyler Bremner and Jackson Flora all earning first team honors. Jonathan Mendez was named to the second team, while first-year Gauchos Nate Vargas, Xavier Esquer and Rowan Kelly all earned honorable mention.
McCollum, Santa Barbara's senior captain, ended his Gaucho career with a bang, putting together an historic season at the plate. McCollum finished the 2025 regular season with a career-best .365 batting average — 5th in The Big West — as well as 10 doubles, four triples, six home runs, 40 RBIs and 17 stolen bases, all career highs. He was held hitless in just seven of his 53 games and failed to reach base in just one game, finishing the regular season on a 49-game hitting streak, the longest in Santa Barbara Baseball history. On March 9, he hit a walk-off home run to complete the first cycle by a Gaucho since Michael Young in 1997.
Bremner, the ace of Santa Barbara's pitching staff, likewise had an historic season in what is likely his final year as a Gaucho. One of the top pitching prospects in the 2025 Major League Baseball Draft, Bremner spent this spring striking out just about anybody and everybody who stepped in the box to face him, including a world-beating stretch run that saw him tally double-digit strikeouts in six of his last seven starts. The righty won back-to-back Big West Pitcher of the Week awards to finish the regular season as he ran away with the conference's strikeout crown. Bremner has 111 punchouts on the season, eighth most in the country and 27 more than the next-closest Big West pitcher. On May 9, he became UC Santa Barbara's all-time strikeout leader, recording the 275th of his career.
The man in second place in The Big West strikeout standings behind Bremner is his teammate, Flora, who racked up 84 K's in his first season in Santa Barbara's starting rotation. The sophomore came flying out of the gates, pitching back-to-back scoreless outings to start the season, but then hit a rough patch in March. A move to the bullpen, where he pitched long relief outings behind an opener, revitalized his season. On April 19, he delivered a signature moment, pitching a complete game, one-hit shutout in The Blue-Green Rivalry against Cal Poly, earning both Big West and National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Pitcher of the Week honors. Since then, he has posted double-digit strikeouts in each of his last two outings, 12 at Cal State Fullerton on May 4 and 11 against Cal State Bakersfield on May 15.
Mendez started every game in the Gauchos' middle infield behind Flora and Bremner, turning 31 double plays but his inclusion in the All-Big West Second Team is thanks largely to his bat. The sophomore leads the team in both home runs (11) and doubles (17), with the latter figure leading the conference as well. He started the year scorching hot, finishing the month of March with more extra-base hits than singles. He has been hot down the stretch too, ending the regular season on a 12-game hitting streak including four straight multi-hit games to end the year. All told, 44 percent of his 68 hits have been at least a double, giving him a team-high .565 slugging percentage and 122 total bases.
Vargas was another every-game starter for Santa Barbara who made big contributions to the Gaucho offense in 2025, with the junior college transfer earning all-conference honorable mention in his first year of Division I baseball. He has a Big West-leading 17 doubles like Mendez and his just one homer behind him for the team lead there, with 10 long balls. The junior catcher also leads the Gauchos with 49 RBIs, eight of which have come from sacrifice flies, the sixth-most of any player in the country. A workhorse behind the plate, Vargas has caught every game since April 17 for Santa Barbara, and he has stayed red-hot at the dish down the stretch, hitting in all but two of the Gauchos' final 19 games.
Ninety feet down the line from Vargas, Esquer made himself Santa Barbara's first choice at third base with both the bat and the glove this season, starting every game in 2025. Defensively, Esquer had more assists than anyone but Mendez this season, frequently showcasing his arm strength with Manny Machado-like throws across the diamond. At the plate, he hit .286 with plenty of pop in his bat, tallying 15 doubles and eight home runs on the season, but what Esquer has done better than any Gaucho this season is get hit by pitches. After wearing four of them — the most in a single game since at least 2011 — in Saturday's season finale, the redshirt sophomore is one HBP away from tying Andrew Calica's single-season record of 24. More importantly, he broke out of a late-season slump with a 3-for-3 day at the dish on Friday, including both a home run and a double, re-igniting his bat as the Gauchos prepare for The Big West Championship.
But arguably the hottest bat down the stretch has been that of Kelly, a rookie who did not make his first start until March 22 but who has not left the lineup since the start of April, hitting his way to All-Big West Honorable Mention. The freshman is hitting .403 against conference opponents this season, making him The Big West's second-best hitter in conference games. He has been great in any game though, hitting .355 overall to rank ninth in the conference. Like his all-conference teammates, Kelly has been great down the stretch, coming into Wednesday's Big West Championship opener on a 14-game hitting streak, including back-to-back three-hit games against Cal State Bakersfield to help the Gauchos clinch their spot in the conference's first tournament since 1998.
Kelly, Vargas, Esquer, Mendez, Flora, Bremner and McCollum will lead Santa Barbara into a do-or-die game against Hawai'i on Wednesday to open The Big West Championship at 12 noon from Goodwin Field on the campus of Cal State Fullerton. With a win, the Gauchos will advance into the tournament's double elimination bracket and continue their defense of the conference title.
(Article courtesy of UCSB Athletics).
Bremner, Flora and McCollum are All-Big West First Team for UCSB News Channel 3-12.
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