Continuing our deep dive of each Mountain West baseball team now that the season is over, we will be going over another former powerhouse in San Jose State. Coming off of a season where they nearly ran the conference tournament table after just squeaking into the May classic as the sixth seed, the Spartans were hoping to utilize that late season momentum in 2026. A non-conference schedule filled with mid-major, regional hopefuls, San Jose State was ready to prove it could get back on track.
However,
San Jose State was quickly humbled in the first month of the season, and could not recover enough in the two months of conference play to get back into the conference tournament. Series losses to Nevada and Washington State quickly proved to be some of the final free breaths of air the Spartans had before everything had to be earned, which was not helped by getting swept by Air Force right afterwards.
Record: San Jose State finished the year with a 24-27 overall record and an 11-13 conference record, just missing the conference tournament due to losing the tiebreaker against UNLV.
Highlight: Winning 1-0 in 10 innings vs New Mexico on March 13 – Ending the first month of the schedule by losing six of your last seven games is not a good look, even if the final game in that span was a win. This made San Jose State’s first conference series against New Mexico that much more important, which the team understood deeply. It was a tight contest throughout, as neither team’s pitching staff folded enough to get a run during the first nine innings. That was not without trying, however, as both the Spartans and the Lobos combined to leave 18 runners on base (SJSJ 11, NM seven). But, that did not stop San Jose State infielder Peyton Rowles from ripping off the bandaid, as he knocked in outfielder Alex Fernandes with an RBI double for the game’s only score.
San Jose State’s first conference game was the spark it needed to not only begin conference play with a game and series win (they won that series 2-1), but also to get a confidence boost in a rough time. New Mexico was, at the time, a recent candidate for top seed in the conference because of their 12-0 start to the year, even with a big drop off afterwards. Taking them down by not allowing a single run against a squad like that was huge, as the Spartans won four of their next five games before their UNLV series, which included two extra innings, non-conference wins against San Diego State.
Lowlight: Losing 10-20 in eight innings at Air Force on April 24 – While the Spartan’s start to conference play was great, the middle was not so much, lowlighted by their series (especially the first game) against Air Force. Riding the coattails of three straight wins against Cal and Fresno State (also non-conference, I don’t know why they do this), San Jose State traveled into the belly of one of the hottest hitting teams in the conference and dang near the country and did well to start the Friday night game. It seemed as if everything was going right for the Spartans, as they put up eight runs through the fourth inning while only giving up one. But, all good things usually come to an end, which started in the fifth for SJSU. The program gave up eight runs in both the fifth while allowing four in both the sixth and eighth innings, with the latter being the mercy rule dagger.
As mentioned earlier, this series was the middle ground of one of the worst conference stretches for San Jose State. After they were swept by Air Force two days later, the Spartans had won two conference games of their past nine, taking a massive nose dive into the bottom three in the standings. It was here that many within the Mountain West community started to be scared for San Jose State’s chances of making the conference tournament despite being picked to finish fifth in the preseason voting (shows how reliable those are). That worry followed the Spartans for the rest of the season, ultimately causing them to put their fate in a lax San Diego State squad against a hungry UNLV squad that got the final spot.
Key Stat: .268 – San Jose State posted the worst batting average in the Mountain West this year, only being tied with Fresno State for the dishonor. This was the second lowest season over the last five seasons, with the only other being in 2024 when that iteration of the Spartans batted .264 throughout the campaign. The only difference? San Jose State made the conference tournament and made it to the championship round before being bounced by Fresno State. In fact, since 2022, San Jose State has made the conference tournament in a variety of different seeds with a mix of either good pitching/bad hitting (2024) or good hitting/bad pitching (2022). It was just not the year to have bad hitting in the Mountain West.
Final Grade: D+ – I know, I know; San Jose State is getting a worse grade than the team lower than them in the conference standings. However, there are two reasons why this is happening. One, San Jose State had a worse strength of schedule than GCU (177 to 128), so they had an easier time just to win three more games. And two, San Jose State had seven of their 27 losses be mercy rule losses, showing how bad the lows were for the squad this year. Odds are they are able to at least compete for a tournament seed next year, but with the ever-present threat of transfers, we will have to see if that becomes a reality.
