Baseball Player of the Year: Jordan Paroubeck — Expectations exceeded by Serra superstar CF

No, the biggest question mark for Paroubeck was how he would handle the intense scrutiny of being one of the most sought after high school player in the country.

“The biggest challenge was being able to compartmentalize, with all the scouts and the phone calls and scouts wanting to talk to him and see him, and also being able to be a student, (to) compartmentalize all that,” said Serra manager Craig Gianinno. “Just trying to balance all of it was more of the challenge and, to be quite honest, he did a great job managing it all.”

Paroubeck’s physical play, along with his mental strength, adds up to him being named the Daily Journal’s Baseball Player of the Year.

Not that Paroubeck did not focus just as intently on his game.

“I did give myself some goals, all-around stuff,” Paroubeck said. “Winning games, winning championships, hanging banners (championship banners in the gym). I know I wanted to hit over .400. I wanted to get double-digit home runs. I didn’t get that.”

No, but he got just about everything else he wanted, short of a Central Coast Section championship.

Paroubeck was a marked man entering the 2013 season. After putting himself on the map with a strong performance at the 2012 Area Code Games in Southern California, he became the one Serra player the rest of the WCAL had circled when opponents faced the Padres.

“Once you become recognized in our league for performing, our league does the job trying to figure how to get him out,” Gianinno said.

Paroubeck admitted early in the season he put pressure on himself to be “the man.” He quickly realized, however, the strength of the 2013 Padres wasn’t the fact they had one superstar, but everyone was willing and able to carry their own weight.

“At the beginning (of the season), I was trying to impress everybody. I was trying to do too much. I just knew it wasn’t fun trying to impress everybody,” Paroubeck said. “I just wanted to have fun and do everything in my power to win. I never felt like I needed to this (or that) to win. [The team] was really solid all the way around.

“It was awesome. Even if we got down in a game, no one got down. Our whole team was full of game changers.”

Gianinno said he told Paroubeck, as well as the rest of the team, to just control the parts of the game that were controllable: good pitch selection, good pitch recognition, put a good swing on the ball. Remember, one of the hardest things in sports in to hit a round ball with a round bat. Once the ball is put in play, the outcome is out of the batter’s hands.

“One of the things we talked about a lot, especially from the hitting perspective, we would commonly say: did you see the ball clearly? Did you put a good swing on it? We weren’t talking about outcomes,” Gianinno said. “Just to get away from saying, ‘I have to go 3 for 4 or 4 for 4.’ [We were] really focused on process goals as opposed to outcome goals.”

Paroubeck did that better than most. He had two or more hits in 11 of Serra’s 34 games and drove in at least one run in 16 contests this season. In league play, he batted .367, not a small feat considering the WCAL is among the best leagues in the nation.

All of his talents — both physically and mentally — not only landed him a scholarship offer to Fresno State, but led him to being the 69th pick of the San Diego Padres in the draft last week.

“I would definitely give myself a solid grade for this season,” Paroubeck said. “Our team was really close. By far, it was the most fun baseball season I’ve ever had.”