Fresno State baseball fans will be well acclimated with Beiden Field this season, especially for much of the first two months of competition.

Of the Bulldogs’ 53 regular-season games, 36 will be played at home, including 25 of the first 30 games through April 1.

The Bulldogs will open the season at Beiden Field with a four-game homestand against Butler, who struggled to a 6-13 road record in 2011 and finished fifth in the Horizon League, a seven-team conference.

Head coach Mike Batesole’s squad will have its regular-season showdown take place the first weekend of March when it hosts No. 2 Stanford. The Cardinal finished with just a 14-12 overall record last season, but advanced to the NCAA Regional round of the national tournament. Stanford was picked to win the inaugural Pac-12 baseball title and boasts a trio of preseason Baseball America All-American selections.

Fresno State will also compete against preseason top-25 competition when it hosts No. 22 California on March 27.

But Bulldog opponents may be the ones circling Fresno State on their schedules. For the fourth year in a row, the Diamond ‘Dogs are the preseason favorites to take the Western Athletic Conference crown.

Fresno State’s stiffest WAC competition is expected to be San Jose State, which was narrowly ousted by the Bulldogs bring home the conference hardware. With three players on the Preseason Coaches All-WAC Team, The Spartans will look to improve from the past two seasons, during which they posted sub-.500 overall records. Fresno State will host its conference rival April 13-15.

The Bulldogs split the regular-season series with the Spartans in 2011, but managed to split or win every conference series throughout the year.

This season’s WAC Tournament will take place in Mesa, Ariz. on May 23-27.