At Pepperdine, He Is a Little Big Man : Baseball: At 5 foot 8 and 170 pounds, Steve Rodriguez doesn’t look like a threat at the plate. But he is among West Coast Conference batting leaders.

MALIBU —  Some baseball players can’t hit their weight; others hit a ton. Pepperdine’s Steve Rodriguez is one of the latter.

If Rodriguez’s weight and batting average were the same, he would be batting .170. Instead, the 5-foot-8 second baseman is batting .430.

Rodriguez, from Las Vegas, is batting nearly 100 points higher than he did last year. He is one of the reasons Pepperdine is in first place in the West Coast Conference this year.

The Waves were 38-10-1 overall as the week began and in first place in the WCC at 23-6, two games ahead of Loyola Marymount (34-20 overall, 23-10 in WCC play). Pepperdine is also ranked sixth nationally by Baseball America and seventh by Collegiate Baseball.

The stocky Rodriguez doesn’t let his lack of size bother him.

“I’m more or less trying to be a pest, to be a nuisance at the plate,” he said. “When I step into the (batter’s) box I want the pitchers to think, ‘Oh, God! Here we go again.’ ”

In addition to his team-high batting average, he leads the Waves with a .580 slugging percentage and 120 total bases, including five home runs, four triples and eight doubles. He has also driven in 41 runs, 12 more than he had all last year. He also leads Pepperdine with 28 stolen bases.

The sophomore has been quite a pest to opponents, but he would like to be even more annoying.

He said that he has improved his understanding of his strike zone since last year, when he did quite a bit of first-ball swinging. He finished with a .332 batting average, three homers, five triples and 12 doubles.

Last year he struck out 21 times in 241 at-bats and drew 22 bases on balls. This year he has struck out 17 times in 207 at-bats and has been walked 22 times, showing that he is being even more selective with pitches.

“I’ve been a little more aggressive this year,” he said. “I’ve been concentrating on hitting the ball a little harder and on hitting balls in my zone. Last year I was a little too aggressive and swung at bad pitches.

“Last year I had to make the adjustment from high school to college baseball, and I don’t think I was ready for some pitches. College pitchers have more velocity and better control of their pitches.

“This year I don’t think pitchers are giving me surprises; I’m ready for all of them now.”

Ready or not, he is providing stiff competition for the WCC batting championship to Joe Ciccarella, Loyola’s 6-3, 195-pound junior first baseman. Ciccarella is batting .434 overall, only four percentage points higher than Rodriguez. In conference play, Ciccarella is batting .447 to .442 for Rodriguez.

Rodriguez’s improvement as a hitter is no accident; it’s a result of hard work and a determination to overcome adversity.

Last summer he played with the Alaska Goldpanners in a summer league for college players. He said that he played the outfield for the Goldpanners so that he could strengthen his arm with long throws. He also tried switch hitting.

His self-improvement program ran into a snag in Alaska, however, when he broke the little finger of his left hand during a game. He tried to bunt for a base hit and when he slid head-first into first base, he was spiked on the finger by the pitcher, who took the throw from the first baseman.

He said he thought the injury was a bad sprain and he played with a splint on the finger for two weeks. Then he went for X-rays because he thought the finger wasn’t healing right and the fracture was revealed. He did not have a cast put on the finger because the break had nearly mended, but he played in pain the rest of the summer.

When he would hit a ball off the end of the bat, he said, “it would send serious vibrations into my pinky, which didn’t feel too good.” But he kept on playing and kept on getting better.

When he reported to Pepperdine last fall, Coach Andy Lopez and his staff put him on a weightlifting routine. It entailed getting up at 5:30 a.m. three days a week to be in the weight room by 6 a.m.

“It was hard for the first couple of weeks, getting up and jumping in the car get to the weight room while it was still dark,” Rodriguez said. “But I got used to it after a while.”

The program has helped to add power to his swing.

At Valley High in Las Vegas, Rodriguez was coached by Roger Fairless.

“Coach Fairless was a disciplinarian, and nobody got out of line,” Rodriguez said. “Even if you didn’t like (his methods), you did (what he asked) because you knew it was for the best. He could bring out the player in a lot of people.”

The hard work paid off. Valley teams won three state championships in his four years at the school, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said his favorite players include shortstop Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals and outfielder Kirby Puckett of the Minnesota Twins, both small men who give their all on the field.

“I’m not as acrobatic as Ozzie Smith, but I will dive or do whatever else I can to get to balls hit my way,” Rodriguez said. “I like Kirby Puckett for the way he shows that you don’t have to be tall to be a baseball player. He’s only 5-8, but he hits the ball as far as six-footers.”

So does Rodriguez. He has 89 hits this season and barring an injury, he should break the Pepperdine record of 93 set by Brad Bierley in 1985.

He dreams of playing in the major leagues and he said he would be more than willing to endure the hardships of playing minor league ball to see his dream come to fruition.

Lopez believes Rodriguez has a future in the major leagues.

“Definitely. I’m sure he does,” Lopez said. “He reminds me of Craig Grebeck, a utility infielder for the Chicago White Sox, who used to play for me at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Craig is about 5-7 and 150 pounds. If he can do that (play in the majors), Steve has the same capability because they are similar in a lot of respects.

“The beauty of baseball is that you don’t have to be that big to do a good job at this level (college) and, for that matter, professionally as well.”