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Bryce Miller: Softball-smashing Mac Barbara leads San Diego State into promising postseason

Junior slugger has developed a reputation for big hits and losing balls in campus canyon with big swing

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It gets expensive being in Mac Barbara’s softball universe.

The San Diego State softball slugger used to earn $10 for every home run she hit as a 10- and 11-year-old until her mother decided it was costing too much.

Barbara, who Wednesday was named co-player of the year in the Mountain West, an award she also scooped up in 2022, has proved costly in college, too.

“In practice every day, coach kind of gets mad at me because we lose so many balls that I hit into the canyon (at the stadium),” Barbara said.

Barbara is the big-swinging engine of the Aztecs, the offensive horsepower behind a group took the program to its first NCAA Super Regional a season ago.

Through 44 games this season, she’s hitting a team-best .368 with a standard-setting 11 home runs and 42 RBIs for the 28-18 Aztecs.

The junior owns a ball-bashing 1.203 OPS, which is alphabet soup for on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. To stir in some context, only three players in Major League Baseball claim an OPS above 1.000, led by Shohei Ohtani (1.103)

Barbara has reached safety in her last 19 games, dating back to March 22. That includes 31 walks, the second most in the Mountain West.

Entering the season, she owned the best career marks for on-base percentage and OPS and stood in the top 10 in slugging percentage, average, home runs, extra-base hits, RBIs and walks.

Softballs, beware.

Or, be gone.

“That’s true,” said Aztecs coach Stacey Nuveman Deniz, of the good-natured irritation of the vanishing balls. “I’m kind of a ballhound. Balls are expensive and we’re on a budget. I joke, ‘You hit it, you get it.’

“The way the stadium is situated, there’s another fence to the street. Sometimes, she’ll hit them beyond that into the canyon. That’s a poke.

“I tell her, ‘I’m going to bill your student account.’ ”

All that raw power positions San Diego State well for the Mountain West Tournament, which begins Thursday in Boise, Idaho. Regionals and potentially beyond await.

Smashing the program ceiling a year ago, coming one victory short of the Women’s College World Series, set a tone. Now, Barbara hopes to smash a few other things.

First, stereotypes.

In the modern game, everyone seems fascinated with analytics and the number-crunching that has flooded all things diamond. Barbara?

“I’m going to be completely honest,” she said. “I never really have a plan when I go up to bat. I just choose to see ball, hit ball. I keep it simple. I don’t like all the new information, the analytical stuff. A lot of people want to throw around me. But at some point, they’re going to miss.”

Miss at your own risk. Her nickname is Tank, after all.

“I was 3 years old when I got the nickname,” Barbara said. “My sister and I grew up as baseball brats. We’d run around the college field when my dad was the assistant baseball coach at Long Beach State. It was when they had Jered Weaver, Troy Tulowitzki, Evan Longoria.

“My sister’s a stringbean. She’s the small, skinny one. I’m the short, stocky one like my dad. So they called me Tank, and it stuck.”

Tanks inflict damage. So does this one.

“Tank is very appropriate,” Nuveman Deniz said. “I’ve been around a lot of good softball players in my time as a coach and a player. Her natural ability to hit the ball is top-five all time of people I’ve seen with my own eyes.

“It’s something special.”

Boiling down the payoff to pure power shortchanges Barbara’s overall impact. There’s patience, too, along with an intangible that is impossible to fully measure.

Knee buckling.

“She’s feared,” Nuveman Deniz said. “Not only does she hit for average and takes her walks, she’s faster than people believe until they see her on the bases. But the power sets her apart.

“She can mis-hit a ball and it’s a laser. It supports the whole offense. If teams choose to walk her, that opens up other opportunities. She’s getting it done right now.

“As we head into the conference tournament, she’s hitting the ball as well as she has all year. It’s a great time for her to get hot.”

Two people have so far been able to avoid Barbara gobbling up even more softball-swatting money. Her father, Don, played minor league baseball in the organizations of the Angels, Dodgers, Red Sox and Brewers — hitting .304 with 42 home runs in six seasons.

In 1990, he recorded the second-highest batting average in Division I (.474). The father and daughter have a bet that if she ever eclipses that in a season, that number will translate to the same amount of dollars.

Barbara’s uncle said he would cough up $1,000.

“I try so hard, but it never works out,” she said. “I still haven’t done it.”

Barbara has one more season to play, if she chooses. She has applied to a range of grad schools and could play professionally, so the decision remains up in the air.

Like one of those softballs she abuses.

“We’ve lost a few dozen balls in that canyon over the course of her career,” Nuveman Deniz said. “When she plays professionally, she can donate some money back to the program and refill the supply.”

Budget fingers crossed.

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