When Isaiah Magdaleno and his size 15 cleats toe the rubber on Friday night at Les Murakami Stadium, University of Hawai‘i baseball head coach Rich Hill will have no doubt the right guy will be on the mound to open the team's season.
Magdaleno, a Los Angeles native, will begin his junior season with the Rainbow Warriors as the team's ace pitcher. Magdaleno pitched in a hybrid role as a freshman in 2024 — of his 12 appearances, he had four starts and a save. While getting his college baseball bearings, his ERA of 7.61 was the highest on the team.
Magdaleno blossomed as a sophomore in 2025, quickly establishing himself as one of the country's top bullpen arms. He went 4-1 with a 2.70 ERA, the best among UH's qualified pitchers. Of his 24 appearances, all came in relief. He locked down nine saves, striking out 77 hitters in 60 innings en route to first team All-Big West Conference honors.
In college baseball parlance, "Friday night guy" is a term reserved for a team's bona fide No. 1 starter, a role Magdaleno is serving for the first time in a Hawai‘i uniform. Come 6:35 p.m. against Gonzaga, it will be Magdaleno who throws the first pitch of UH's highly anticipated 2026 season.
"I'm very grateful to get the opportunity," Magdaleno said earlier in the week. "Very thankful to the pitching coach, (Keith Zuniga) and coach (Hill), the opportunity to get the Friday night and opening day start. Very excited to get it going and get the season started."
Despite the success Magdaleno had closing out games in 2025, Hill noticed one of Magdaleno's strengths out of the bullpen was his ability to get more comfortable as his outings went on, a trait he believes will translate well as Magdaleno becomes a full-time starter in 2026. Eighteen of his 24 appearances in 2025 were stretched across multiple innings.
"He had a couple of outings where it got tied and he was forced to go more than five innings," Hill recalled. "I can remember against UC Irvine on the road, which was a regional team, really an Omaha team, he kind of dominated him. Same thing here at home one night. ... So, he can do it. He seemed to kind of get stronger as the game went. He's got a phenomenal changeup, a great curveball, and the fastball is really improved. I think he can go two times, maybe three times around the order."
Magdaleno's fastball hovers in the 95 miles per hour range, but pro scouts and coaches alike believe his changeup is his best pitch. He's also added a cutter and sinker to his repertoire to go with a developing slider.
With the year he had in 2025, Magdaleno was viewed as an appetizing option for power conference schools were he to enter the NCAA transfer portal. Hawai‘i has seen its share of promising pitchers finish their college careers elsewhere. Harrison Bodendorf departed for Oklahoma State in 2024, while Cooper Walls left for Florida following his freshman season in 2025. But to Magdaleno, leaving was never an option.
"I was committed to coming back here. I didn't want to leave. I love the fans here, love the community, love the coaching staff," Magdaleno said. "They've always been giving me the ball and they've been trusting me, so I just wanted to give that back to them. And just taking that load off of knowing that I wasn't going to leave to begin with, and coming back and supporting the fans and being a leader once I got back."
As Hawai‘i enters its final season in the Big West Conference, the team believes it has what it takes to make its first NCAA regional since 2010. A big reason why? The Friday night guy taking the ball to start things off.
"I've never started opening night, so I don't really know what it'll entail, but I know that I'm ready for the this crowd to be live," Magdaleno said. "Since I was a closer, everybody is usually up during those innings towards the back end, so I'm just excited to see what it looks like from up there, but just taking it in and just doing my job at the end of the day, just making pitches and let my defense work, really."
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Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
