Snow signals baseball season

By Brian Bailey
©2016 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

Ice and snow… Freezing temperatures… Welcome to baseball season at East Carolina!

The Pirates opened game week on Monday with freezing rain falling, causing treacherous driving conditions all over eastern North Carolina.

The weather is expected to break later this week, and surprisingly temperatures in the 60’s should help usher in the baseball season.

ECU head coach Cliff Godwin begins his second season with a team that features 17 returning players and 17 newcomers. Getting those players to blend will be the key to getting off to a good start.

“We have a nice blend,” said Godwin as his Pirates continued preparations last week. “We have much more depth and we are a confident bunch.”

A pair of lefties will start this season opening series for the Pirates.

Evan Kruczynski, minus that head full of hair he sported last year, will start Friday’s opener. Jacob Wolfe will go for ECU on Saturday.

The Pirates will wait until the weekend to name Sunday's starter, but Jimmy Boyd appears set for that role unless he is needed earlier in the series.

The ECU coaching staff says there are still several battles for positions taking place this week.

“We do continue to have some battles,” said assistant coach Jeff Palumbo. “I think they will continue on into the season. If you look at our opening day starting lineup from a year ago, and compare it to the one that started the American tournament championship game, you’ll see it was much different.

"I believe that our lineup will evolve over time. We want to utilize our depth and so we will play a lot of players.”

Some positions are pretty much locks. Travis Watkins will be behind the plate. Bryce Harmon will man first base.

Joe Ingle will close. Ingle was named on Monday as one of 70 players on the initial Stopper of the Year Award watch list.

Garrett Brooks and Parker Lamm will likely take two of the outfield slots as team captains. But these two will be pushed as several of the newcomers look to stake their claim to a role with the squad.

Longwood comes to town this weekend after going 22-34 last season. The Lancers have brought in several junior college transfers for second year coach Ryan Mau for this season.

“We’ll get on the Internet and check with all of our contacts on a scouting report,” said Palumbo. “It’s a little tough this early, but we’ll do some research and be ready.”

For whatever reason, season ticket sales for Pirate baseball are down heading into the week. That’s a shame, because Cliff Godwin and company put out a great product that was fun to watch last year – and that should be better this season.

Godwin’s team has already set marks for team GPA and for service hours. Godwin preaches culture and those sermons are paying dividends.

“That’s our baseball culture,” said Godwin. “It took us a while to get on the same page last year, but now we have guys that know what we expect.”

“Coach Godwin tells everyone to work on getting better one percent per day,” added Palumbo. “It adds up. The guys are working hard and ready to play another color of jersey.”

The Pirates get that first chance on Friday afternoon.

The weather appears to be cooperating. It should be a great weekend on the diamond.

We’ll see you at Clark-LeClair Stadium.

BB

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