Roughly a year and a half after seeing his collegiate baseball career completely uprooted, Stony Brook infielder Nico Azpilcueta has made a name for himself as one of the best hitters in the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA).
Azpilcueta started his college career at Saint Mary’s College in California, a school that he called home for two and a half years. Following his sophomore year, Saint Mary’s head coach Greg Moore was let go.
That summer, the school re-hired Eric Valenzuela — who previously headed the Gaels’ program from 2014 to 2019 — and he quickly made changes.
“After the fall of my junior year, the new coach pulled me aside and said, ‘Look, we don’t really have a spot for you anymore. We think you should leave,’” Azpilcueta said in an interview with The Statesman. “That was probably the hardest and most complicated couple of months that I’ve had in my baseball career. It was just a weird situation.”
Even getting to Saint Mary’s was a challenge for Azpilcueta in and of itself. Unlike many of his peers at the Division I level, Azpilcueta does not hail from an athletically-driven background, and was not heavily recruited in his high school years.
The extent of his familial ties to sports was his father — George Azpilcueta — who enjoyed a brief high school swimming career. Azpilcueta briefly played basketball, but focused his attention on baseball upon starting at Crespi Carmelite High School.
While most of his family was not involved in athletics, Azpilcueta attributes his love for the Los Angeles Dodgers as a key reason in his love for baseball.
“It all started when I was four or five years old and I went to a Dodger game,” Azpilcueta said. “Andruw Jones threw me a baseball in the stands and from that point on, all I wanted to do was play baseball.”
However, upon getting to Crespi High, the diamond was not kind to Azpilcueta.
“[My high school career] actually didn’t start out too great,” Azpilcueta said. “I didn’t really play much my first two years and I was really just a pitcher. I didn’t hit that much or hit that well, but I started figuring it out my junior year.”
Once he got his feet under him, the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the world and cut Azpilcueta’s season short.
“After they shut everything down, I came back my senior year and played really well,” Azpilcueta said. “The thing was that because of COVID-19, college coaches weren’t really looking for players because a lot of guys were coming back with eligibility. I was in a tough spot after that recruiting-wise.”
Nonetheless, Azpilcueta’s senior year showed what he is capable of: playing beyond high school.
“I was playing in a league with a lot of good players and I put up some of the best numbers in that league,” Azpilcueta said. “That was the point where I said to myself, ‘Okay, I can hang with these guys and get to the next level.’”
Initially, Azpilcueta planned to go to a junior college (JUCO) right out of high school. He was set to play for Los Angeles Mission College, a local school where an old coach of Azpilcueta’s worked. Then, on the heels of his strong senior, Saint Mary’s came calling.
“Right when we finished the season, I got a call from [Saint Mary’s],” Azpilcueta said. “Right around June of that year, they were the only school that reached out.”
In two years at Saint Mary’s, Azpilcueta redshirted his freshman year before managing just one at-bat and 2 ⅓ innings on the mound across three appearances.
“Outside of baseball, I loved it there,” Azpilcueta said. “My teammates there are still some of my best friends and guys that I still talk to every day. On the baseball side, it was tough. After I fought to make the roster, I wasn’t really getting as much playing time as I wanted. It’s tough to go through a period where you aren’t playing the sport you were playing your entire life.”
That stretch led to some self evaluation for Azpilcueta.
“I thought I had the tools to compete at that level, but I was never consistent enough,” Azpilcueta said. “I just wasn’t able to compete with the guys around me that were older than me and could do similar things to what I was doing.”
After two and a half years with the Gaels, Valenzuela broke the news to Azpilcueta that he would not have a spot for the spring of 2024. Being cut in the middle of the school year, Azpilcueta was put in an awkward position. His options were either to lose a season by sticking at Saint Mary’s for the remainder of the academic year, or to find somewhere else to play. After months of deliberation, Azpilcueta packed up his life at Saint Mary’s and headed about an hour south down Interstate 680.
“I spent that winter thinking but right around the end of January, I just left and said, ‘I’m going to go to JUCO and play.’” Azpilcueta said. “I didn’t even know the NCAA rules about transferring mid-year. My initial plan was to wait out the year and then enter the portal. Then, the JUCO coach ended up calling me up and said we can do this and make the academics work. Within a week, I was playing my first at junior college.”
Azpilcueta linked up with Michael Curran — the head coach at Ohlone College outside San Francisco — and made the switch work.
“It was actually a really easy transition,” Azpilcueta said. “I only spent four months there, but I still talk to a bunch of those guys. JUCO is an interesting spot because there’s a lot of guys in the same situation as you are and looking for an opportunity. Everyone is looking for a chance to prove themselves and they’re all very supportive.”
With the move to JUCO also came the decision to drop the two-way aspect of his game.
“I just didn’t want to spend too much more time on pitching,” Azpilcueta said. “When I went to junior college, I told them I’m not going to pitch any more, I just want to hit.”
That move paid massive dividends, as the focus on hitting came with jaw-dropping numbers at the plate. In his lone season at Ohlone, Azpilcueta had 52 hits in 41 games, hitting at a .342 clip with an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.100. He also tallied 10 doubles, 12 home runs and drove in 44 runs while drawing 28 walks.
“I felt like I had a chip on my shoulder,” Azpilcueta said. “I was pretty upset about how the last few months had transpired and I felt the need to prove to myself and everyone else that I could actually play at the college level.”
Following his big year, Azpilcueta began seeking out opportunities at four-year schools. His numbers caught the eye of assistant coach C.J. Whelan, who had a connection with Azpilcueta from each of their respective times in the Bay Area.
“At first, I was trying to stay on the West Coast, but then it looked like those opportunities weren’t really there,” Azpilcueta said. “From there, I expanded my search and [Whelan] called me up and told me what they had [at Stony Brook]. I had only ever heard of Stony Brook from the 2012 College World Series run, but they showed me around, made me an offer and I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’”
At Stony Brook, head coach Matt Senk was tasked with replacing much of a roster that lost 23 players from the 2024 team to either the transfer portal or graduation. To make up for those losses, Senk brought in 26 new players, with Azpilcueta being one of the biggest additions of the offseason.
“It’s not always easy to adjust to a new team,” Azpilcueta said. “The returning guys just made it super easy on all us newcomers and made us feel like we’ve been a part of the team all along.”
While the transition was easy on a team level, the biggest challenge might have been the geographic change. Nearly 3,000 miles from Ohlone, the move to Stony Brook marks Azpilcueta’s second time in New York.
“This is the first time in New York since I went to Cooperstown in Little League when I was 12,” Azpilcueta said. “It’s a bit different from California. The weather was the biggest thing for me. It is freezing over here in the winter.”
After the uncertainty where he would play last offseason, Senk made his trust in Azpilcueta clear from the beginning. In the Seawolves’ first game this season, Azpilcueta was penciled into the cleanup spot in the batting order and filled the designated hitter role.
“I knew that I could be in the middle of the order and produce some power and runs for this team,” Azpilcueta said. “I had a good feeling about my playing time before the season, but it was just a matter of how we were going to figure it out positionally.”
The immediate trust went a long way, as Azpilcueta doubled in his first at-bat of the season on Feb. 14 against Bethune-Cookman. He had a pair of hits in the opener before going on a nine-game hitting streak between Feb. 16 and March 7. In Stony Brook’s 13th game of the season, Azpilcueta finally connected on his first home run, a tape-measure shot against Niagara.
“In those first few weeks, I think I was pressing too hard,” Azpilcueta said. “Obviously, the average was still up there, but I think those numbers are a bit deceiving. I wasn’t doing my job driving guys in and driving the ball. So I was kind of frustrated with myself. Eventually I had to sit down and relax, loosen up and play the game the way I had been playing it before.”
Despite homering again on March 11, Azpilcueta went on another five-game homerless drought.
“The second game against Delaware, I was talking to Chanz [Doughty] and Erik [Paulsen] a little bit before the game,” Azpilcueta said. “I was just like, ‘I don’t care if I strike out, I’m just going to go up there, take some swings and try to do damage.’”
Azpilcueta ended up slamming a pair of home runs that day on March 22, jumpstarting a stretch of seven homers in eight games.
“Obviously, you don’t want to strike out, but I go up there with the mindset that striking out isn’t even a thought in my head,” Azpilcueta said. “I’m going up there and the first pitch I can hit, I’m driving it. I’m just trusting myself more, not second-guessing myself, not hesitating. Now, when I go up there, I am confident in what I’m trying to do.”
On April 18, Azpilcueta got his first taste of a local rivalry in the Battle of Long Island against Hofstra.
“I didn’t even know that this was a big rivalry until I got here,” Azpilcueta said. “It was really cool to see. Some of our guys seemed to know basically everyone on their team and they knew everyone on our team. It was one of those where you just go out there and compete and see who’s the best.”
While Azpilcueta is new to the Northeast, the series against Hofstra allowed him to play in front of his cousins, who are native to the area.
“I had some family in the stands with a couple cousins out in Nassau County, so it was cool for them to come out and support me,” Azpilcueta said.
All things considered, Azpilcueta had potentially his best weekend of the season, going 7-for-13 with six doubles and a long three-run homer that gave Stony Brook the lead for good in a 7-5 win on April 19. He also drove in six runs throughout the three-game series.
“It was just a great time,” Azpilcueta said. “Running around the bases after a home run is always great, but doing it in that game with all my teammates getting hyped up was cool.”
After getting cut in the fall of 2023, Azpilcueta had made the most of his two stops since leaving Saint Mary’s. He started his Stony Brook career with a 39-game on-base streak, and leads the CAA in home runs with 15. On the year, he is slashing .349/.426/.750 while driving in a team-high 47 runs. With the remainder of the 2025 season and the full 2026 campaign left as far as Azpilcueta’s NCAA eligibility, the pieces are finally coming together in what has been a convoluted path to the North Shore of Long Island.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that I expected this, but this type of performance was always the goal,” Azpilcueta said. “To be able to perform at this level and to be able to do what I’ve done after all the work, it feels really good. It feels like all the work is finally coming together.”
Given his individual success so far at Stony Brook, the top goal for Azpilcueta is to achieve team success. However, he continues to take things day by day.
“The dream growing up is always to get drafted, play professionally and get to the big leagues,” Azpilcueta said. “When I was coming out of high school, I just had to take things one step at a time. First, it was making the team, then work your way up from there.”
