SJSU baseball finally opens season after COVID outbreak

“We’re kind of glad we got all that over with now instead of the middle of the season … because if so, we would have just had our entire season canceled,” Prozell said.

The Spartans are now set to open their season Saturday at the ballpark formerly known as Municipal Field, Excite Ballpark, with a doubleheader against San Diego State. Prozell said he expects to pitch in relief at some point Saturday and hopes to work his way into the starting rotation my midseason.

“It’s been a minute for San Jose State to play this year,” Prozell said. “So, it’s going to be really good to get back out there.”

Prozell first realized he might have contracted COVID when he began losing his sensations of taste and smell. Once he tested positive, he was placed in quarantine, living alone in a hotel room for 13 days.

“I got kind of the worst effects of not being able to taste and smell, but everything else was fine,” Prozell said. “I didn’t have any flu like systems or anything, so I’m doing OK.”

Upon exiting quarantine, Prozell was subjected to several additional tests as part of his athletic physical examination, including an electrocardiogram and an ultrasound on his heart.

“After 10 or 13 days, I got out of the hotel and took another week to get cleared, and from there I just hit the ground running,” Prozell said.

Some momentum would be welcome to Prozell, who pitched in just four games last year before the season was shuttered. In his first year at San Jose State as a transfer junior out of CSM, the right-hander was 1-1 with an inflated 7.71 ERA, while earning his first Division I victory Feb. 29 with six solid innings against Utah Valley State.

Prozell is still carries the same swagger on the mound he always has. The right-hander is still heavy-ball filthy with a chip-on-this-shoulder edge. The big different between his game now, from his years at Carlmont and CSM, is he now pitches exclusively. Until his sophomore year at CSM in 2019, he was long revered as a legitimate two-way threat, notching a career .309 batting average with the Bulldogs.

“At junior college it was a grind,” Prozell said. “I had to do a lot of extra work for being two way, a lot of extra hours at practice, always coming home late … and I thought that pitching could get me the farthest, and I wanted to focus on that for the rest of my career.”

The right arm of Prozell certainly plays. He was one of the standouts of CSM’s pitching staff in 2019, and that’s really saying something. The Bulldogs threw down a staff ERA of 3.83, with a majority of the pitchers now performing at the four-year level: Jamie Kruger, Westmont College; Nico Zeglin, Gonzaga University; Brett Karalius, Rogers State; Austin Moberg, San Francisco State; and Zach Button and Carlo Lopiccolo, Cal Poly.

Prozell, though, won two legs of the Coast Golden Gate Conference pitching triple crown with eight wins and a 2.54 ERA. His 74 strikeouts ranked second to Kruger’s conference-leading 80.

Heading into 2021, Prozell said the ball is coming out of his hand mighty fine.

“Perfect,” Prozell said. “I just need a little bit of time, get some innings in, see how I’m doing against live hitters, but so far so good.”

It took Prozell a couple games to get the kinks out at San Jose State. Making his Spartans debut Feb. 16, 2020 at Santa Clara, he got touched for four runs in three innings. But he left the butterflies behind, he said, and got on track two weeks later, dealing at Utah Valley, allowing one run on five hits through six innings while striking out eight.

The 6-1 right-hander is looking to pick up this weekend where he left off.

“I think it’s going to be like usual,” Prozell said. “I’m going to hold my self-confidence as always and make the most of my opportunity. But I definitely think there’s going to be some jitters from not being out there for so long.”