Blue Devils hoping experience pays off
TROY, N.Y. » Baseball can be a grueling, grinding, gradual process. Entering the 2018 campaign, the Columbia Blue Devils hope to use those growing pains as a lesson and motivation, following a tough one-run first round loss to the La Salle Cadets in Sectionals last year.
“I think the one thing we have is we have that group returning. The core junior class last year, now they’re all seniors,” Blue Devils manager Chris Dedrick said. “So, they’re hungry, especially after taking that tough loss to a good La Salle team last year in the last inning, so they have a little fire in their bellies right now. We have a great returning group of seniors, good leaders, really working hard, so it should be interesting.”
The experience, a point stressed by Dedrick and his players.
“I think our best strength right now is going to be the experience. We’ve been in close games before. I think we’re going to be able to handle tight games a lot better, because it seems like every game in the Suburban Council is a tight game, it’s always a game,” Dedrick said. “Our top two pitchers are back, we have a couple good young arms that are coming in play that I think are going to do really well for us. Offensively, we can only go up from where we were last year. We struggled a little bit early in the season last year and got it together at the end of the season so I’m hoping that it will payoff for us this season as we come up, we can get hot early. I think defensively, the experience we have I think guys know the plays, know how to hold runners on, we know how to defend, so I think we’re going to do a lot better with that as well, just from experience.”
“We should have a pretty good team. We got ten returning seniors and had some success last year,” Blue Devils senior second baseman Justin Pangburn said. “We started off a little slow and finally found our groove, so we should be pretty good going into the season.”
Those sentiments were shared by Blue Devils senior pitcher Brandon Ostiguy.
“I think we know what to expect, since we do have so many returning players,” Ostiguy said. “I think we’re stronger as a team, we more bonded and know what to expect from this level of play. So I think it’ll help us a lot this year.”
Part of that bonding and effort of getting off to a fast start, included a team trip to Maryland.
“Like Justin said, I think we’ll do pretty well,” Blue Devils senior pitcher Danny Watson said. “This year we were able to get Maryland in, so we have a couple of games in under our belts, so I think we’ll be coming into the season really good.”
“We were really lucky, we were able to get down to Maryland and play three scrimmages,” Dedrick said. “We traveled down with the Shenendehowa team and we were able to get a bunch of innings in, which was awesome just to get outdoors and still evaluate and see what kind of talent, how we’re developed and that kind of thing.”
Another huge part of player development in baseball stems from making adjustments as the competition level rises.
“I think our defense will get a lot better this year,” Pangburn said. “I think offensive wise we were all new to seeing that type of pitching last year, we had a lot of juniors and this year with all of the returning guys we have a ton of experience and we should be better off that way.”
Pangburn’s teammate Ostiguy, agreed.
“Like Justin said, I think defense is easily going to be one of our strengths because we’ve
been working on it,” Ostiguy said. “We’ve all been working hard to try to be better at our position and with all of the time in the gym, taking a lot of ground balls I think it’s really going to help us a lot so I think we’re confident.”
It’s a confidence which comes from a lot of hard work and experience.