Troy University Athletics
Getting to Omaha is Primary Focus
2/11/2009 6:00:00 AM | Baseball
This is the first of many blogs for the Troy Trojan baseball team this year. Hopefully the blogs will take you through a winning and very successful season, but only time will tell.
We are coming off a somewhat down and disappointing year. Last year started off very promising, with a 12-3 start, but it seemed that after the Arizona State series (0-3) we could never get consistent results in the win column.
We finished the season at 32-26. Certainly not a bad year, but not what we shoot for.
This year's team has the potential to go far into the playoffs and, God-willing, make it to Omaha ? every college players' fantasy town.
This year's team will be looking for guys to replace the talent and leadership shown by All-American Bryan Miller in centerfield and All-Conference catcher Beau Brooks. With many promising faces, hopefully the task won't be too big to overcome.
We also have key roles to fill on the mound, replacing four-year starter Ryan Ellison and hard-throwing reliever Rob Brown. But, with many new faces to fill the roles, we should be set.
This year's team is well represented in age, from the 42-year-old, I mean 24-year-old sixth year senior, J.J. Whetsel, to 18-year-old freshman Tyler Ray. We have a solid senior class of 10 players ? five position players and five pitchers. The rest of the team is made up of a lot of talent in the sophomore and junior classes. Each player brings something different to the table.
This year is the first year that the NCAA instated a maximum roster size. This year we can only have 35 team members, and this roster has to be set before our first trip to South Carolina in a couple of weeks. We still have 41 guys on the team that are hoping to be on the 35 man roster, so the next couple of weeks are going to be filled with emotion.
Nobody knows the real reason for this change in roster size, but it certainly is a crazy idea. It only serves to eliminate the hopes of many high school and junior college athletes that want to play Division I baseball.
There really is no reason for this rule to have been put into play, but I guess we will try to adjust the best way that we can.
Our 2009 team is filled with exciting guys and high emotions. This is the most unique team that I have ever been apart of. The way the guys handle things and have prepared for the season are completely different than in years past.
Over the past couple of years, our teams really have not been very vocal when it came to the team. Don't get me wrong, we had a good TEAM, but everyone kind of did their own thing and expected the rest of the team to do the same.
This year we have the Energizer Bunny, Chad Watson, and the high-spirited Steven Rosado to keep the team excited and in tune. The entire team has become more vocal and more motivated toward the season.
I love how our team will do anything for each other. You don't have to worry about keeping yourself in check because the next guy is right by your side to help pick you up and keep you motivated.
When we run sprints, we don't call them sprints, we call them Omahas. Even our workout shirts have Omaha printed on the front. Everything we do is under the influence of the mystical Omaha and we use that as our everyday motivation.
This weekend was our first full weekend of intra-squad games. It was a long weekend, but a successful one. The hitters got a good look at some good pitching and the pitchers got a good look at some good hitters. Although the squad games aren't our favorite thing to do, it is definitely a necessary part of the preparation needed to be ready for the season.
The pitching for the weekend looked good and some key guys that will be needed this year got in some good work on the mound. The hitting was a little down on the weekend, but that is expected after three months without seeing live pitching. The hitting did pick up a little bit towards the end of the weekend though.
We are anticipating a great offense, great pitching and a great defense this year. We have guys that we can count on for every position in the outfield, infield and catching. Our pitching staff looks to be very solid with a lot of depth at the starter and reliever positions. We also have our closer, Josh Storm, that we can count on to finish out the games.
All in all, I am very excited about a promising year of Trojan baseball and I think our team has the potential to do great things never done by the Trojan baseball team before. I hope the fans show up this year, like they have in the past couple of years, and do their part to help us win another conference title, and hopefully win a lot more than that as well.
We are one day closer to Omaha!!!!!
Trevor
