Coming off its first losing season in nearly a decade, the Gustavus Baseball team is looking to learn from last year and contend for a berth in the Conference Tournament.
The Gusties open their non-conference season Sunday at the Metrodome against UW-Oshkosh. After a weeklong trip to Arizona over Spring Break, Gustavus will open its MIAC schedule at St. Olaf on April 7, 2010.
“I thought as a whole last season was very disappointing,” Senior outfielder and pitcher Andrew Woitas said. “I feel we underachieved as a team, and things never really clicked the way we thought they were going to. At times we did play well but never consistently put whole games together.”
After starting last season’s conference schedule with consecutive series sweeps against St. Mary’s and St. John’s, the Gusties finished the season with a 5-11 mark down the stretch to earn themselves an eighth place finish in the MIAC standings.
“Last year I think our biggest problem was consistency at the plate and on the mound. We were either hitting and not pitching or pitching and not hitting,” Senior infielder and pitcher Alan Woitas said. “I think there are a lot of games last year that we should have won, but the ball just didn’t bounce our way.”
Coming off a season in which it lost eight seniors to graduation, the relative inexperience of last year’s squad showed itself at times.
“It was somewhat of a rebuilding year in the sense that we lost so many players to graduation from the previous season,” Senior infielder and pitcher Tory Herman said. “But I believe the experience we gained should be apparent in the coming season.”
This time around, the Gusties graduated only three players from last year’s roster. However, all three were regular contributors during their careers at Gustavus.
“All of the seniors last year played key roles on the team and their presence will definitely be missed, but that is just how college baseball works,” Herman said. “It’s obviously going to be hard to fill the shoes of an all-conference kind of guy like Mike DesLauriers, but the open spots will just give new guys opportunities to contribute on the field.”
One year removed from becoming the first Gustavus baseball team to finish under .500 since 2000, the Gusties will look to surprise their opponents with their unheralded talent.
“I think we will be under the radar a little bit heading into Conference play. That’s OK with me, though, [because] we have enough talent to compete with everyone in the MIAC,” Alan Woitas said. “We feel like we should be towards the top of the Conference when the season is all said and done.”
Last year’s squad finished the season ranked last in the MIAC in homers, emphasizing the importance of executing the team’s small-ball approach.
“From a hitting standpoint, we will have to rely on our team speed and situational hitting,” Andrew Woitas said. “We don’t really have a powerful hitting team, so we will have to find ways to manufacture runs.”
In reviewing last season’s statistics, the team’s knack for avoiding strikeouts at the plate coupled with its relatively low number of hits suggests that last year’s hitters made plenty of contact but just weren’t able to “hit it where they ain’t.” With a small-ball approach, this year’s team will have to execute more often in the clutch in order to rise in the standings.
“I think we may be more aggressive on the base paths this year than we have in the past, whether that be straight up stealing [bases] or using a lot of hit and run,” Alan Woitas said. “We will have to be a scrappy team that relies on solid situational hitting to score runs.”
Another big struggle last year proved to be the pitching staff’s difficulty with getting key outs with runners in scoring position.
“The pitching talent is there ,[and] our guys have good stuff, so it is just a matter of hitting spots and keeping the ball down in the zone,” Herman said. “I feel that our pitching staff has acquired the mentality that ‘it’s not what you throw, it’s where you throw it’ and I think the results will be better this year.”
Many of the spots in both the team’s lineup and rotation will be up for grabs during these first few weeks, but the team hopes its younger players step up and fill these gaps.
“I think we have a lot of new players who will be ready to step in and fulfill bigger roles for us this year,” Alan Woitas said. “Everyone is really excited to start playing. These practices have been the best ones of my four years here, and we are looking forward to competing.”
The team’s annual trip to Arizona will provide it with a chance to play some early season games outdoors while allowing the flexibility to audition players for various roles in a non-Conference setting.
“We are heading down there in hopes of winning a lot of games and playing good baseball,” Andrew Woitas said. “However, we also use it as a time to fine-tune things and make sure that when we get back, we are ready for Conference play and are able to put the best possible team on the field.”
Some players believe that Head Coach Mike Carroll will juggle lineups even more in this year’s trip than in the past in order to become more familiar with his newer players.
“This year down in Arizona I think we might experiment a little more than we have in the past with switching lineups around and finding out what is going to work the best,” Alan Woitas said. “We want to be playing our best baseball by the time we get back and enter MIAC play because those are the most important games of the year.”
With the winter snow slowly melting away and temperatures finally rising above freezing, the time has almost come for the team to practice outside underneath the spring sun.
“Practicing in the gym can get old, but every northern team has to deal with that,” Herman said. “We are definitely getting excited to start playing games in the Metrodome and down south.”
With several practices already under their belt, the players have been able to bond and prepare for the journey that awaits them over the next two months.
“So far the season has been a lot of fun. We have a great group of guys that work hard and have a lot of fun doing it,”Andrew Woitas said. “We have great team chemistry, and we are all just really excited for games to be starting shortly so we can get the season under way.”