Rob Smith had a large problem to deal with when he took over head coaching duties from Joe Carbone, who’d been in charge of the baseball program for 24 years.
The Bobcats had a minimal amount of pitchers returning.
Through graduation, the Major League Baseball Draft and early defections, Smith was forced to replace eight pitchers, the 384 innings they pitched and the 3.73 earned run average (second in the Mid-American Conference this past season) they accumulated.
That left Ohio with 10 pitchers on the roster, including four freshmen. And with injuries to sophomore Tyler Plys and junior Sean Kennedy, Smith has been short of options coming out of the bullpen.
Smith said he’ll have 10 to 11 new pitchers next year and that pitching depth shouldn’t be a concern for Ohio in the future.
“I can assure you of this,” Smith said. “We’re certainly never going through a season where we only have six or seven actual pitchers.”
But for this season, to combat this lack of depth, Smith decided to combat the lack of pitchers on the roster by reaching into the rest of the roster to see if he could convert position players into hurlers who could throw strikes.
After combing the roster, he found infielders Logan Cozart and Brad Przebieda to plug up Ohio’s chief deficiency this season, as this year’s squad is last the MAC in team ERA (5.72).
“We started to realize that we were going to have some shortcomings in sheer numbers,” Smith said. “We started working with Logan late October, early November. With Brad, we probably didn’t start using him until a week, maybe even two into the season.
“We just started doing bullpens with different guys … to see if guys showed anything that was of interest.”
Cozart and Przebieda are no strangers to taking the hill.
Cozart, a native of New Philadelphia, Ohio, was the ace of his Indian Valley High School staff, but when Smith was hired as the new head coach, he had no idea of Cozart’s high-school pitching experience.
At the urging of his teammates, he let Smith know of his prior work on the mound.
Due to a sports hernia sustained in the fall, Cozart is no longer able to play the field or take at-bats for the remainder of the season. For the sophomore, the irregularity of bullpen work is an adjustment to his work in the field last season.
“It’s different not playing every day,” Cozart said. “I’m not in a starting role, so I don’t know if I’m going to go in during a game. If it’s close, coach will send me down to the bullpen. You just have to have a different mentality in the bullpen because you never know if you’re going in.”
At Bloom-Carrol High School in Lancaster, Przebieda described himself as a utility man. He played infield, pitched and was wherever his coach needed him.
In terms of pitching, Przebieda was his team’s closer his sophomore and junior year, later graduating to a starting pitching role his senior year as his team lacked depth and experience on the mound.
The junior couldn’t care less about what position he plays. As long as he’s filling a role that aids the team, it doesn’t matter.
“They just asked me to come in (to pitch),” Przebieda said. “There was maybe some potential to help out the team there, and that’s all I want to do is help out the team in any way, shape or form that I can. So if it’s on the mound, it’s on the mound.”
ch203310@ohiou.edu
