The Diamond Deacs start their season this weekend with 4 games in Houston, 2 against Nicholls and 2 against Houston. Let's hope for continued improvement this year and a march back to the postseason!
What are people's expectations? Mine are similar to last year with a 9-11 place finish in conference, and hoping for a 3 seed in the postseason.
Although there is some media buzz surrounding this team, I'm still skeptical that we will be any better than last year. Even though Fairchild is projected to be very good and Dunshee should be at least as good as he was last year as a weekend starter, attempting to replace Craig and Mondou in the offense is going to be a challenge. On the positive side, our pitching was so bad last year that it's not hard to imagine a scenario where there's some significant improvement in that regard.
We'll get a glance at who would be pitching weekend series in conference play next weekend when we host a three game series against USC. I expect it will be Dunshee, Sellers, and Johnstone. We can always switch around Johnstone/McCarren depending on matchups but all four guys starting this weekend are righties. In fact, there are only four left-handed pitchers on the team: Tyler Witt (So.), Carter Bach (Fr.), Holden White (Fr.), and David Peljovich (So.). Peljovich faced a total of eight batters last year, striking out four while giving up two hits against early-season competition. Witt pitched 2.2 inning and gave up 7 runs. White is supposed to be pretty good. He tore the labrum in his non-throwing hand but was the top rated baseball player in New England on a couple sites and a top 500 prospect in the country. He is apparently close to 90 on his fastball. Bach wasn't as highly rated as White, but was still a top 100 lefty coming out of high school.
Sorry for the rambling, just think the lefty situation is interesting given how many pitchers generally get used in college.
Long story short, I expect this team to make the ACCT (newly expanded format has 12 of the 14 make it, so just don't be bottom two) and be right around the bubble again for the NCAAT. I think a 3 seed is a good goal and we'll see if this team is better than expected. The two games against Houston this weekend should be good tests to see where we stand. It's a little unfortunate that we get them in the second game of a doubleheader today when their game against us is their season opener, but I guess that's their benefit of hosting (three games in three days rather than four in three days, necessitating a double header). I would have preferred to play Houston on the front end of a double header but it is what it is.
Go 3-1 this weekend and let's get the season started off right!