Birdball Raising Bar By Embracing Challenges For Growth
February 14, 2023 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
Last year was an inconsistent time for BC baseball, but the Eagles look to build on that experience behind a deep lineup and veteran pitching corps.
In early March of last year, the Boston College baseball team made its annual Spring Break trip to Florida. The Eagles planned to directionally traverse the state by playing a three-game series at North Florida and a two-game series at South Florida before opening their ACC schedule with a three-game weekend set at Miami, and it represented the culmination of a month-long road trip that brought a sense of normalcy to college baseball after the COVID-impacted 2021 season.
The pandemic was a thing of the past, but the trip to Florida ultimately defined how BC still felt the aftershocks of the sledgehammer hit to its program over the past two years. COVID's arrival in 2020 ended college baseball after a dozen games and one conference weekend, and the ensuing summer cost players a key step in their development. When they finally returned to the field, they were without the stepping stones to push their careers forward, and the necessary restrictions from the fall and winter built further obstacles and roadblocks.
Those hindrances came to a head almost immediately to start the 2022 season when BC lost two of three games at Austin Peay, but a win over Presbyterian bridged past hard-luck losses in a two-way doubleheader against George Mason and USC Upstate. The trip to Florida was an opportunity to put that into the past with a regular schedule, but it instead opened the lid on those issues by inserting them into the public college baseball debate.
The wins and losses were on either end of the extreme, and 7-0 and 10-4 wins over the Ospreys were tempered by a 17-10 loss. An 18-8 win over USF was matched by an 11-8 loss, and a 12-11, series-opening shocker over a Miami team bound for a national seed in the NCAA Tournament was followed by two losses by a combined 23-5 run differential.Â
The season would eventually follow that formula, so after going 19-34 last season, a Birdball program that long embraced development with a trademark dedication and gusto is ready to build its 2023 into something that conditions prevented over the past two-plus years.
"I think there was some inconsistency across the board," said head coach Mike Gambino. "It's not an excuse, but our inconsistency was partly due to our youth. There wasn't a lot of experience on the field, and even with all the guys that came back with COVIDÂ [eligibility], we knew that we were going to be a little bit young last year. But when you throw a couple of injuries into all of that stuff, you just become really young, really inexperienced, and really inconsistent."
College baseball recruiting and development often operates on six-year cycles, but COVID's deletion of the 2020 season forced every team to adapt on the fly. Major League Baseball's First Year Player Draft was shortened to five rounds, and highly-touted recruits who likely would have signed as sixth-round or seventh-round picks instead matriculated into the college ranks to play for programs already stocked with draftable talent passed over by MLB's abbreviated format.
When the draft finally came due, BC matched the production of draftable talent with five solid picks for a two-year span. In 2021, the Milwaukee Brewers selected Sal Frelick with their first round pick of one of Major League Baseball's deepest drafts, and the Detroit Tigers picked Luke Gold in the fifth round last year after he slipped nearly 60 spots behind where draft experts believed he belonged. Three pitchers went between rounds 12 and 18, and after Cincinnati picked Mason Pelio, the moves by Houston and the Los Angeles Angels to pick Joe Mancini and Max Gieg ensured BC competed for draft numbers alongside the ACC factories at North Carolina, Florida State and Miami.
Only one thing really stuck out as a difference in the way the programs reloaded, and it came to a head between the drafts during the 2022 season. Those teams are national factories widely recognized for their ability to amass talent, and the COVID years produced a number of five-star players who didn't get selected in the draft's new format. BC always competed with them by developing good, solid recruits with high ceilings, and losing the player development aspect to COVID forced the Eagles to train on the fly during the regular season.
It created two ways of looking at last season. On one hand, BC lost too many games by too many runs, and the pitching staff finished with an ERA that was far too inflated. Slugging teams launched runs off the Eagles, and the month-long span between Miami and Wake Forest produced eight double-digit run games by opponents with the nadir coming at home when the Demon Deacons had 35 runs on 38 hits in the first two games of the series.
On the other hand, the Eagles got steadily better as the season churned forward, and they ended the season by throwing pitching duels at eighth-ranked Virginia Tech and No. 23 FSU, the latter of which was a 3-2 victory at home. BC played a one-run ballgame against NC State and a two-run game against the Hokies' fourth-best offense in the league, and a midweek win over Super Regional-bound Connecticut.
"The good news about what we went through last year is that we've got the experience now," Gambino said. "They had the year to grow and learn and get better. You can already see how much slower the game is getting for guys, and now if guys have to play every day, you're not going to look at them and think it's a little bit too much for them."
Absorbing the blows didn't make the 2022 season any easier, but glimpsing that ceiling illustrated BC's road back into the ACC Tournament and beyond. The Eagles were one of the most patient teams at the plate last year and struck out significantly less than the free-swinging teams at FSU, Clemson, UNC and Virginia Tech. They had more doubles than Wake Forest and slugged more home runs than the Seminoles, and returner Travis Honeyman ranked among the league batting average leaders with Gold. Cameron Leary's nine home runs in ACC games was 19th-most in the league, and he finished among the top-50 players in runs batted in and slugging percentage.Â
Henry Leake threw 40-plus innings in ACC games and was 24th in the league with 41 ACC strikeouts, and his eight home runs allowed were less than Miami's Carson Palmquist and Florida State's Bryce Hubbart and Parker Messick.
"We have some hard decisions because we've got really good players fighting for spots," Gambino said. "We have four really good outfielders for three spots and four really good players for three infield spots other than first base. Parker Landwehr, Peter Burns, and Adonys Guzman are all very capable of being number one, everyday catchers. So we're looking at taking the next step. This is not a game where we'll have the same lineup 50 times in 56 games because we have a lot of lineup combinations."
BC opens up this weekend with a three-game series against Pepperdine in Malibu, California. Friday is slated for a 4:30 p.m. start with both Saturday and Sunday scheduled for 4 p.m.
The pandemic was a thing of the past, but the trip to Florida ultimately defined how BC still felt the aftershocks of the sledgehammer hit to its program over the past two years. COVID's arrival in 2020 ended college baseball after a dozen games and one conference weekend, and the ensuing summer cost players a key step in their development. When they finally returned to the field, they were without the stepping stones to push their careers forward, and the necessary restrictions from the fall and winter built further obstacles and roadblocks.
Those hindrances came to a head almost immediately to start the 2022 season when BC lost two of three games at Austin Peay, but a win over Presbyterian bridged past hard-luck losses in a two-way doubleheader against George Mason and USC Upstate. The trip to Florida was an opportunity to put that into the past with a regular schedule, but it instead opened the lid on those issues by inserting them into the public college baseball debate.
The wins and losses were on either end of the extreme, and 7-0 and 10-4 wins over the Ospreys were tempered by a 17-10 loss. An 18-8 win over USF was matched by an 11-8 loss, and a 12-11, series-opening shocker over a Miami team bound for a national seed in the NCAA Tournament was followed by two losses by a combined 23-5 run differential.Â
The season would eventually follow that formula, so after going 19-34 last season, a Birdball program that long embraced development with a trademark dedication and gusto is ready to build its 2023 into something that conditions prevented over the past two-plus years.
"I think there was some inconsistency across the board," said head coach Mike Gambino. "It's not an excuse, but our inconsistency was partly due to our youth. There wasn't a lot of experience on the field, and even with all the guys that came back with COVIDÂ [eligibility], we knew that we were going to be a little bit young last year. But when you throw a couple of injuries into all of that stuff, you just become really young, really inexperienced, and really inconsistent."
College baseball recruiting and development often operates on six-year cycles, but COVID's deletion of the 2020 season forced every team to adapt on the fly. Major League Baseball's First Year Player Draft was shortened to five rounds, and highly-touted recruits who likely would have signed as sixth-round or seventh-round picks instead matriculated into the college ranks to play for programs already stocked with draftable talent passed over by MLB's abbreviated format.
When the draft finally came due, BC matched the production of draftable talent with five solid picks for a two-year span. In 2021, the Milwaukee Brewers selected Sal Frelick with their first round pick of one of Major League Baseball's deepest drafts, and the Detroit Tigers picked Luke Gold in the fifth round last year after he slipped nearly 60 spots behind where draft experts believed he belonged. Three pitchers went between rounds 12 and 18, and after Cincinnati picked Mason Pelio, the moves by Houston and the Los Angeles Angels to pick Joe Mancini and Max Gieg ensured BC competed for draft numbers alongside the ACC factories at North Carolina, Florida State and Miami.
Only one thing really stuck out as a difference in the way the programs reloaded, and it came to a head between the drafts during the 2022 season. Those teams are national factories widely recognized for their ability to amass talent, and the COVID years produced a number of five-star players who didn't get selected in the draft's new format. BC always competed with them by developing good, solid recruits with high ceilings, and losing the player development aspect to COVID forced the Eagles to train on the fly during the regular season.
It created two ways of looking at last season. On one hand, BC lost too many games by too many runs, and the pitching staff finished with an ERA that was far too inflated. Slugging teams launched runs off the Eagles, and the month-long span between Miami and Wake Forest produced eight double-digit run games by opponents with the nadir coming at home when the Demon Deacons had 35 runs on 38 hits in the first two games of the series.
On the other hand, the Eagles got steadily better as the season churned forward, and they ended the season by throwing pitching duels at eighth-ranked Virginia Tech and No. 23 FSU, the latter of which was a 3-2 victory at home. BC played a one-run ballgame against NC State and a two-run game against the Hokies' fourth-best offense in the league, and a midweek win over Super Regional-bound Connecticut.
"The good news about what we went through last year is that we've got the experience now," Gambino said. "They had the year to grow and learn and get better. You can already see how much slower the game is getting for guys, and now if guys have to play every day, you're not going to look at them and think it's a little bit too much for them."
Absorbing the blows didn't make the 2022 season any easier, but glimpsing that ceiling illustrated BC's road back into the ACC Tournament and beyond. The Eagles were one of the most patient teams at the plate last year and struck out significantly less than the free-swinging teams at FSU, Clemson, UNC and Virginia Tech. They had more doubles than Wake Forest and slugged more home runs than the Seminoles, and returner Travis Honeyman ranked among the league batting average leaders with Gold. Cameron Leary's nine home runs in ACC games was 19th-most in the league, and he finished among the top-50 players in runs batted in and slugging percentage.Â
Henry Leake threw 40-plus innings in ACC games and was 24th in the league with 41 ACC strikeouts, and his eight home runs allowed were less than Miami's Carson Palmquist and Florida State's Bryce Hubbart and Parker Messick.
"We have some hard decisions because we've got really good players fighting for spots," Gambino said. "We have four really good outfielders for three spots and four really good players for three infield spots other than first base. Parker Landwehr, Peter Burns, and Adonys Guzman are all very capable of being number one, everyday catchers. So we're looking at taking the next step. This is not a game where we'll have the same lineup 50 times in 56 games because we have a lot of lineup combinations."
BC opens up this weekend with a three-game series against Pepperdine in Malibu, California. Friday is slated for a 4:30 p.m. start with both Saturday and Sunday scheduled for 4 p.m.
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