You can see it in the players’ and coaches’ faces that this is a Pirate baseball team that can’t wait to open the 2019 schedule.
The Radford series can’t get here quick enough on February 15th.
Monday was media day for the Pirate baseball team. The event opened with head coach Cliff Godwin.
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“The guys are excited,” said Coach Godwin. “These guys have worked really hard and are looking forward to the season. We have lots of guys who will play, which is important for our depth.”
Make no mistake about it. This will be a deep ECU baseball team. The Pirates have depth on the mound and on both offense and defense.
“We really think we can put different lineups out there, depending on the situation,” said assistant coach Jeff Palumbo. “We could have some really big bats in the lineup and then substitute for defense late and really cover some ground.”
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The Pirates return 23 letter winners led by All-American Bryant Packard.
Packard received his 4th preseason All-America honor on Monday. He was named 2nd team All-American by Baseball America.
The Pirate star and Greenville native had already garnered preseason All-America accolades by Collegiate Baseball, D1Baseball and Perfect Game – all first-team honors — while also being selected as the American Athletic Conference Preseason Player-of-the-Year by the league’s nine head coaches.
Packard says it’s not easy to, as Coach Cliff Godwin preaches, ‘ignore the noise.’
“It is hard,” said Packard. “But all of these preseason honors are based on last season. They don’t hand out the trophies this early. I just have to go out and prove myself every day.”
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Packard became the first player in program history to be included in seven All-America teams in the same season a year ago,
The real, lighthearted part of media day concerned Spencer Brickhouse’s hair style.
Brickhouse has a full mullet. It almost looks like the mane of a lion. The first five questions from the media for Brickhouse concerned his hair style.
“The pitchers said they liked it when I first started it,” said Brickhouse. “I’m just trying to have a little fun with it. My mom didn’t like it at first but she came around.”
Coach Godwin said last week that while he didn’t favor anything that brought attention to an individual, it was OK with him as long as the play on the field and the effort in the classroom remained strong.
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“He spends more time on his than I do on mine,” said Packard, who introduced his mullet a year ago.
The Pirates have a great problem on the mound. Even though pitching Coach Dan Roszel says you can always have more pitching depth, he has to like what he’s starting the year with.
That staff includes the likes of Jake Agnos, Tyler Smith, Trey Benton and Alec Burleson. This is a talented and veteran staff. The coaches weren’t ready to announce their first weekend rotation as these guys will continue to battle for the next couple of weeks.
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Godwin also said at media day that ECU and Wichita State were the only two schools in the American that will be equipped for replay reviews this season. The AAC coaches voted to use the replay system at games hosted by the Pirates and the Shockers.
Godwin knows his Pirates will have a target on their backs this season. He knows his program didn’t handle that role well in 2017 because of a number of factors.
I don’t see a repeat of ’17 at all in 2019. That year was strange in many ways. Injuries and breaks just didn’t go the ECU way.
Injuries are always a concern, but this Pirate team is deep in all areas.
It should be an exciting spring. And it all starts in less than three weeks.
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