During the 2013 season, Ohio won 14 games and went its entire Mid-American Conference campaign without a series victory on its way to missing out on the conference tournament.
In other words, things can only be better in 2014.
The Bobcats will begin their season on Feb. 14 at Western Carolina as coach Rob Smith enters his second season as coach with many more tools at his disposal.
“We actually have a full staff of pitchers, which is a good start,” Smith said. “At one point last year, I think we had six actual true pitchers, with the remaining ones being rounded off with position players.”
This season, Ohio will have a full staff of 16 hurlers who will look to build on what was statistically the worst staff in the MAC last season, with a 5.68 earned run average.
“Having the comfort of knowing that there are other guys behind you that are more than capable of doing their job and helping this team, it’s just phenomenal,” said Connor Sitz, a sophomore starting pitcher. “I think it lifts so much stress off the guys that were here last year.”
Ohio brings back two of its three starting pitchers in sophomore Jake Miller and Sitz, who will look to build off of freshman seasons in which each showed signs of growth despite a good deal of pressure being heaped upon them, Smith said.
Freshman Jake Roehn, a right-hander from Sandwich, Ill., will join the starting staff to fill the void of Marck Paliotto, who graduated after last season.
Roehn was rated the fifth-best pitcher in Illinois by PrepBaseballReport.com and features good control, with an 86-90 mph fastball to pair with a sweeping slider and a changeup that can give left handed hitters trouble.
Offensively, the Bobcats have a good deal to replace, losing shortstop Dan Schmidt and Ben Otto to graduation, as well as Cody Gaertner, Nick Squires, Nate Squires and Brice Nikithser to season-ending injuries.
Gaertner, Nate and Nick were the second, third and fourth best hitters on the team when looking at batting average, and each had on-base percentages of at least .345, and though he didn’t play much last season Smith said he really liked what he saw from Nikithser in fall camp before his injury.
“In some regard, you could say that we lost our two, four, five and six hitters out of our lineup,” Smith said. “Their injuries are certainly going to present some challenges for us offensively, but I’m confident that our guys will respond and play good, solid team offense that will help us produce runs to help us win games.”
And because Ohio isn’t a team that will outslug other teams — Ohio ranked ninth in the MAC with a .336 slugging percentage last season — there will be an emphasis on doing the fundamental things to produce runs.
“The kind of way we go about things is team offense,” senior outfielder Scott White said. “You don’t need to hit a two-run home run to score runs all the time. So we manufacture runs (with) stolen bases, sac bunts, safety squeezes, those kinds of things.”
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