Behind strong pitching, sound defense and capable hitting, the Philomath High School baseball team expects to be in the hunt for its first Oregon West Conference title since 2022. The Warriors are coming off a 21-7 season that saw them reach the quarterfinals in the 4A playoffs.
“If we play the way we’re capable of playing, we should win the league,” said Philomath coach Levi Webber, who is entering his 16th season at the helm. “Then again, it’s high school baseball and so you never know what can happen. But I do see us as being that team that should be going out there and taking care of business to win a league title.”
During the conference championship season four years ago, the Warriors advanced to the 4A semifinals with wins over Henley and Banks. The team has settled for runner-up each of the past two years.
“Our expectation here is always to compete for a league title and make a deep run in the playoffs,” Webber said before last Wednesday’s practice. “I don’t think it’s any different this year.”
Philomath will have one of 4A’s top players back in the lineup this season in senior Caleb Babcock. Webber described Babcock’s pitching prowess as the “premier arm in the state last year at our level” — a statement backed up by exceptional statistics from his junior season with a 9-0 record, 0.81 earned run average and 115 strikeouts in 60-2/3 innings.
“To strike out that many guys, you have to be extremely efficient to do that,” Webber said. “He pitched pretty much into the seventh in every single one of his starts if he didn’t throw the whole game. For him, it’s just commanding the strike zone, just pounding the zone. If he does that, he’s going to be just fine.”
Much like last year, Babcock, who plays center field when not on the mound, will ease into the season with a close eye on his pitch count.
“We’re not expecting him to go out and throw a complete game in the first couple of weeks,” Webber said. “We just want him to go out there and throw strikes and pitch as deep into a game as he can while keeping his pitch count down.”
Philomath might have one of the top pitching rotations in Class 4A — a group that includes Babcock, senior Wylie Griffith, junior AJ Altishin, junior Jacob Hernandez, junior Camaron Kvidt and sophomore Jayce Iverson.
“We’ve got some depth on the mound that we feel really good about,” Webber said. “We’re going to have to see what that shows when we actually get out there in a real test, a real fight, but we like what we have out there.”
Looking over the team as a whole, the Warriors will need to replace five players that were regulars in the 2025 lineup.
“We lost some guys off last year’s club that were very impactful,” Webber said, a reference to starters Joe Barnes, Grant Niemann, Kayson Olsen and Brady Russell. “You’re talking about four really, really good players for us for a couple of years.”
Besides those four that graduated, the team also lost Rocco De La Rosa, a first-team all-conference infielder last season who opted to participate in track and field this spring.
Still, Webber believes he has plenty of firepower returning. In addition to Babcock, other returning starters include Hernandez, Griffith and Altishin.
“So we have a lot of experience coming back plus you couple that with some really talented young guys that are coming up, some good athletes there,” Webber said. “We feel really good about our club.”
Philomath will see a new starting catcher this season.
“Grant was behind the dish for three years for us, so you lose that leadership — he handled our pitching staff extremely well back there,” Webber said. “We’ve got a couple of guys working to fill that spot.
Junior Cam Herbert and sophomore Sammy Hernandez are two players seeing time behind the plate.
“The big thing we need out of them is mostly just to be really good at controlling our pitching staff and making sure we’re good at receiving, good at keeping balls in front of us,” Webber said. “If they throw guys out, that’s icing on the cake but I think our pitchers can do a good enough job of controlling the running game where we don’t need to feel like we have to throw a ton of guys out.”
Another key position with a newcomer will be at shortstop. Webber mentioned Sammy Hernandez, Iverson and Altishin as options.
“It’s not like last year where we had a shortstop with Kayson — he didn’t pitch for us — and I loved that because you’ve got a good one and you can just plug him in there and go,” Webber said. “This year will be a little bit different because we’ll have to be moving some guys around here and there. But we still feel confident in their ability because they’re good athletes.”
Elsewhere in the infield, Kvidt will start at first base, Griffith returns at second base and either Altishin or Iverson will be over at third. With all of those players also pitching, Webber will move players around based on how the day’s lineup shakes out.
“All of them are good defensive infielders, which is great because they can play multiple positions,” Webber said. They’re all pretty versatile and do whatever needs to be done.”
In the outfield, Babcock and Jacob Hernandez will both see time in center field.
“Caleb is probably the best center fielder in the state and Jacob might be the second best as far as I’m concerned because they’re both really, really good defenders who can run and have a real knack for going and getting the baseball,” Webber said.
Junior Rustan Woosley in left and junior Gavin Bennett in right will both see a lot of time on the field, Webber said.
“We have some good options there,” Webber said. “They’re all good defensive outfielders and they can really run, too. It’s fun when you have an outfield that’s super athletic like that.”
Webber has 21 athletes in the program, a number that he wishes was a little higher. He’ll carry 11 on the varsity and 10 on the junior varsity. A newcomer this year will be senior Cameron McLennan, a strong multi-sport athlete who is playing baseball for the first time.
Longtime baseball fans may be surprised to not see Philomath heading to a tournament in Newport this season. For the first time in more than a decade, the Warriors will skip the coast and instead compete in The Dalles.
“There was a changing of the guard over at Newport as far as the baseball coach is concerned and so an opportunity with The Dalles coach presented itself,” Webber said. “We want to see the best competition over that spring break and it looked like the best opportunity was going to be up there.”
The Warriors will play four straight days with games against Astoria, Henley, St. Helens and The Dalles.
“I’m sure it’ll be fun and new, something exciting for the guys,” Webber said. “We’re pretty familiar with the place — we went up there a couple of years ago to play in the playoffs and last year, we went up there and played a couple of games during the summer. It’s going to be good baseball.”
As Webber mentioned, Philomath should be among the league title contenders. Newport, the league’s defending champion, along with Cascade and Stayton have new head coaches. The Eagles have Webber’s attention.
“They were a really young, talented club last year, so I think Stayton might be one of those teams that you’ve really got to watch out for because they’re going to be hungry,” he said. “They gave us everything we could handle last year, that’s for sure.”
Sweet Home also returns most of its players and could impact the standings, the coach added. North Marion also has a number of its athletes returning.
Philomath was scheduled to compete in a jamboree Monday in Adair Village with a couple of innings each against Central, Santiam Christian and Dallas. The regular season opens at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Crescent Valley. The team’s home opener is scheduled for 5 p.m. Friday against Gladstone.