Bulls enjoying being early birds
Like the nerdy kid getting all his homework done early in the weekend, the Lethbridge Bulls are also getting a jump on things.
They, like the rest of the teams in the newlynamed Western Canadian Baseball League, can thank a lengthened regular season schedule for that. For the Bulls it starts on the road tonight against the Edmonton Prospects at 7:05 p.m.
As his team ran through one more pitching and batting practise Friday afternoon at Spitz Stadium before departing for Edmonton this morning, Bulls head coach Jesse Sawyer welcomed the chance to piece his roster together a little earlier.
“It’s been a long fall and spring getting all of these guys here. We have a very big roster because we are starting so early this year. So I’m really happy with how many guys we have this year. With the pitching staff, we have 10 guys out there and one of them is meeting us in Edmonton. So to go in basically a week earlier than normal with 10 pitchers already and more coming is very exciting. I’m very excited about some of these arms. Because that was basically our biggest weakness last year.”
This year, the Bulls will play 56 regular season games.
As well, the Prospects are planning a special weekend-opener in Edmonton which the Bulls happened to draw on their schedule.
“So I think they're going to have a good crowd out there,” said Sawyer. “We’ve got a good group here already. We’re only missing a handful of guys. At this time of year it’s always a little bit of a feeling out process and they have to get to know each other. This is as quiet as will be all year. They’re starting to learn each other’s names and all that. So it’s an exciting time.”
The Bulls went 19-29 last year, finishing fourth in the Western Division and losing in four games to the eventual league-champion Medicine Hat Mavericks.
“We’ve talked as a coaching staff about some things that didn’t go how we planned them last year and how we need to be better as a coaching staff on certain things,” said Sawyer.
“We’re going to have a team meeting (Friday) afternoon after practice and talk about team expectations and talk about last year and the things that we struggled with and how we plan to fix them this year. We’re really looking forward to it.”
The Bulls skipper already likes what he sees forming on his lineup card.
“In all three aspects, on paper, I think we’re better than last year,” said Sawyer. “We’ve improved on the defensive side and picked up David Hudleson (of Henderson, Nevada) out of the College of Southern Idaho. He has a really good shortstop glove. I’ve made my roster a little bit more flexible so if I need to take a guy out where his glove isn’t as strong to put in a better glove in or mix bats between left and right, we have a really flexible roster this year.”
That flexibility will get its first test tonight and Sunday afternoon at 2:05 p.m. in Edmonton.
“We’ve been doing our research as much as we can, going online and looking at rosters,” said Sawyer. “We were looking at Edmonton’s roster and there were maybe three names that I recognized. So they basically have a fresh team this year. So I don’t quite know what to expect. We’re going to go there and expect them to compete hard and we are going to do the same and hopefully we can get out of there with a couple of wins.”
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