Baseball Notes Pt. 2

LET’S TALK ABOUT PLAYERS

Last season, Creighton saw All-American outfielder Parker Upton trot in from the grass pasture and position himself defensively at the most active spot on the infield dirt at shortstop. This was of his own volition; the Jays had lost Jack Strunc and couldn’t fill the void in time, so Parker stepped up and stepped in.

His offensive numbers suffered for it, going from .483 OB% to .424, from a .603 slugging% to .408, and a .324 batting average all the way down to .224. He went from committing just one error the season before to racking up 6 errors in just fifteen games.

Now, he’s back in the pasture, roaming free in centerfield, with opportunities to have his name and face splashed upon SportsCenter’s top ten plays any given weekend, with the words “Web Gem” screamed side by side with his highlight.

Creighton not only filled the holes that made them simply mediocre last season, they filled them with exclamation points. They’ve got a kid from Vandy, two from Furman, and a farmhand from Boise. They supercharged the back-end of their bullpen and added a young, fresh, left handed King of the Anthills to prop up an already solid rotation.

Although the pandemic has wrought terror upon this great country, and the game itself, it appears - at least on the surface - that Ed Servais, Connor Gandossy, Eric Wordekemper, and Paul Weidner have made the most of it.

What’s below is yet another quote dump, to prepare you before the first pitch is tossed this season, for what Creighton’s got to offer. The studs and the freak athletes that are ready to go pound-for-pound with the Big East.

Enjoy.

The Silver Bullet - Sterling Hayes

Ed: “Anybody who followed us last year realized that shortstop was just an unsettling position. That’s not a knock on the players - we tried to move Parker Upton in there, and I have a ton of respect for Parker because he sacrificed a lot of his individual goals for the betterment of the team. After several games it became apparent that it was affecting his routine and his offense. So we decided to move him off [shortstop] and realized that we needed to do something about that.”

“Any player, whether he’s a freshman, a 4-year transfer, or a JuCo tranfer, there’s an adjustment period, and you can tell Sterling [Hayes] was going through that the first couple of weeks. A lot of these kids haven’t played much baseball. Sterling played some summer ball, but a lot of these players had not played in several months, so it was kind of a strange fall. Really strange… It took [Hayes] a couple weeks to get settled in and comfortable with our style. He’s had a pretty good month of preparation leading up to this weekend. He has a good instinct for the game itself. He’s played a lot, being from San Diego. I think he’s a guy that can handle a bat and gives us a guy that can be called upon to bunt, hit-and-run, hit behind runners. He just has a good feel for situational baseball - which I’m not surprised by given the program that he came from.”

“His instincts defensively are very good too, and when you play shortstop you have to understand angles on ground balls and I think [Hayes] understands when he has to charge a groundball or when he has to take ground on a groundball, and all of those things that sometimes it’s hard to teach a player that doesn’t have those natural instincts. I think with each week he’s going to get more comfortable. I’m very interested to see how he responds. He hasn’t been a fulltime player in a while but we need somebody [at shortstop.] We’ve been so blessed in the past years to have outstanding shortstop play, and we need to get back to that level again.”

More up the middle

Ed: “We’re going to start Andrew [Meggs] in the first game, but Cam [Frederick] will get a chance to play at second too. [Meggs] has practiced as well as anybody on the team this past month. He’s been spot on. He’s stronger, he’s excelled in drill work offensively. I think he learned last year that he needed to get stronger, sometimes he got tired when he played back-to-back days. I’m happy for him because he’s always been one of our most committed, hardest working guys.”

“Cam is a very good player too, very athletic, kind of fits our style at Creighton. His athleticism is a plus for him and he just needs to play and get some experience. It’s good to know that we have some options out there in the infield.”

The Northern King of the Anthills

Ed: “[Cade Lommel] is very talented. Great work ethic. He’s got his sights set on bigger things - which I like to be around, those kind of players. He’s got better during his short period here. He’s very physical, very strong, doesn’t look like a freshman, he looks like an outside linebacker in football. I think he’s just scratching the surface.”

“Left-handed, sharp breaking ball - he doesn’t always know where it’s going right now - but that’s not unusual. But he’s got a major mix for a freshman. I’m always very slow to work the freshmen in, and I want them to get off to a good start and expand their role, but Cade’s ready. He’s ready for the bigger role as a freshman. And he’ll get there as early as this weekend. He just has a plan. He knows what to do. He’s had some pretty good instruction before he got here. I believe he’s going to throw 93-94 from the left side. I just like everything about him. He just needs to learn to manage his time a little bit and stay on point but his ability is outstanding.”

The Prophet

Ed: “Jonah will be our Saturday starter - following Dylan [Tebrake]. He wants that. I think we need him there. I’ve always been a Jonah Smith fan. He’s a very good teammate, a hard worker, he’s always improved. He’s improved 8-9mph on his fastball since he arrived here three years ago. I think he wants that challenge.”

“I think we’re going to be OK in the bullpen. That’s the question I had with Jonah, I asked him, “Jonah, do you want to be in 28 games or do you want to be in 14 games? Because out of the bullpen I’m going to use you twice a week. Starter, obviously I get once a week.” And he’s ready for this different challenge. He knows it’s a unique challenge. He wants to go out there and prove that he can do it so I think it’s a good spot for him. I think he’ll pitch in that first game of the Saturday double headers. He’s ready for it.”

The Bully

Ed: “We’ve got a lot more depth. We’ve got another freshman throwing 94-95 in Hudson Leach. He kind of came out of nowhere - he didn’t pitch in the fall because he had a bit of an injury situation - but he’ll be throwing important innings for us this spring as well.”

“The back-end - what we want out of it - is we’ve gotta have strike throwers. We’ve gotta have guys that throw in different slots and different angles, to give the hitter a different look. John [Sakowski] certainly does that. Tommy Steier certainly does that. And now we’re going to move Ryan Windham - who’s a power guy - into that back-end. He had success a couple years ago as a closer in the Northwoods league. Last year, he came out of the blocks and dominated. His first innings were outstanding. Then he kind of hit the wall a little bit, so maybe he’s a 1-2 inning pitcher. We brought him out of the bullpen against Las Vegas [last season] and he pitched three innings and they had no chance. We determined that Ryan could accel in the bullpen, and he preferred being in the bullpen, so it gives us a different look.”

“We’re hoping for good things from the left side, from Paul Bergstrom - who’s been part of our program for three years - and we picked up a transfer from San Francisco by the name of Ryan Cowdrey who’s a left handed pitcher with some experience at the D1 level. Then we’ve got a freshman who didn’t pitch in the fall by the name of Caleb Carpenter, who really looked sharp in our fall workouts. Last year we didn’t have a lot of left handed pitchers out of the bullpen other than Paul [Bergstrom] and there were times where I needed a lefty past the sixth [inning] and I’m burnt in the eighth [inning]. I think we wanted to balance our bullpen a little bit and I think we have, and that’s just in short relief.”

“In long relief we’ve got Alex Loosbrock and Ben Dotzler, both known commodities.”

The Athleticism

Ed: “We’re pretty close [to the 2019 team.] We’re probably not going to have the physicality of that team. I don’t think we’re going to hit the homeruns. With Cam [Frederick], Parker [Upton], [David] Webel, [Jared] Wegner and Will Hanafan, we have some really athletic players there. It’s nice to have Ryan Mantle back with Dax Roper and Sterling Hayes.”

I think athleticism-wise we’re close to having something similar to the 2019 team. We’re probably not going to be able to match that power that they had very often, but that was a perfect storm. You’ve got to remember that the 2019 team - five of those kids started as freshman so by the time that they got to be juniors they had a wealth of experience under their belt and they were ready to take on all comers. That doesn’t happen very often. My goal would be not to have to start five freshmen, but a lot of things happened with that crew where they had the opportunity to grow. This team is not that far behind [where we started in 2019.]”

“The key with this team will be health and we need to get Parker back to where he was two years ago, we need to get Ryan Mantle back to where he was when he was healthy. Jared [Wegner] got hurt last year with a broken hamate bone - and remember, he was off to a fast start last season that was setting up to be successful. He’s a very talented player that a lot of people don’t know about because he played very sporadically his freshman year.”

“I don’t know if we’re ever going to fully appreciate a guy like Jake Holton. Jake came out of nowhere and just blossomed right in front of our eyes. And Jake gave that team a swagger. There are no drills for that, you can’t practice that. I see a little bit of that with some of our newcomers and we’ll see - and you project all you want through practice - but we’ll see what they do between the white lines and see how they respond.”