It’s easy to look at the upcoming home series against Belhaven and say it’s an important series for the Wolf Pack’s season. It’s three games against a conference opponent that is only .5 games behind us. A bad weekend could have Loyola at the bottom of the SSAC standings.
Belhaven is struggling this season with just a 1-5 record in conference, but there is one thing that makes this team dangerous: they have players fast enough to make a baseball game look like a track meet.
The Blazers are currently the second ranked base stealing team in the country with 61 stolen bases in 22 games this season. Loyola has also had some success stealing bases this year with 26 steals of their own, but unless Usain Bolt decides to take time off from raising his pet cheetah to pinch run for the Pack, the speed advantage lies with the Blazers.
Since Segnette Field has a natural grass infield I would suggest that the players and coaches in charge of cutting the grass make a few extra passes on the lawn mower to make the infield surface faster so the Blazers will have a harder time turning ground balls into infield hits. But since lawn care is probably not high on the Pack’s list of priorities, there are some other things the team can do to keep the base paths from looking like a relay race.
For the pitchers, keeping walks to a minimum will be key. The pitching staff can’t afford to sit the ball on a tee for them, but with the Blazers batting .250 as a team, it may be a good idea to come right after these guys with fastballs early in the count to avoid falling behind. The Pack cannot afford another repeat of a game like their Feb. 16 match-up against Auburn-Montgomery where 11 batters worked walks off of Loyola pitching.
Catchers will be a key part of the series as well. Loyola has six catchers on the roster and they’ve all seen some playing time, but senior Bradley Brunet has been getting the majority of the starts behind the plate. Unfortunately for Loyola, Brunet has not had much luck throwing out runners this season. He has only thrown out two of 24 base stealers so far this season.
It would be easy to say that head coach Doug Faust should give one of his other catchers a shot to get a more reliable throwing arm behind the plate, but with Loyola throwing out seven of 55 base stealers this is clearly a team problem. Pitchers will be the first line of defense against stolen bases but hopefully this week’s practice included more throwing drills for catchers.
If this problem is not corrected, Loyola could drop further in the standings and leave them with no other option but to report their bases as stolen to LUPD on Monday with the hope that the thieves who stole second and third are brought to justice. (But I’m sure LUPD will just report that the bases were lost.)
Hasani Grayson has been covering baseball as a staff writer for two years for The Maroon. Grayson can be reached at [email protected]
