It never gets old!

I've got to admit, as our opening day gets closer I get more and more excited about the season and can't wait to get outside, down south, and compete on the baseball field.  After school each day I get online and read about stuff going on in the baseball world, such as the start of MB spring training, college games already being played in the south.....all of that with the MLB Network on the television.

As close as it is, I now have a tentative rotation set for our seven games in the south.  We are planning to use six starting pitchers during our seven game trip.  We have two seniors who have proven it on the field already, some juniors and sophomores who have some quality experience, and several freshmen pitchers who are just going to get better every day.  This trip will help us figure out who we are going to use in our four man rotation during conference play in the MIAA season, which begins in late March.  In saying that, the starters for the first league series could possibly be different than the second series, and so on.

What I feel real good about is that I believe we have more depth on the pitching staff than we have ever had before.  The only negative about that is trying to find enough innings for guys.  They need to pitch competitive innings not only for their development and sharpness, but also to keep their competitive fires burning.

One of the toughest issues for us as a coaching staff to deal with is trying to decide which players we are going to take on our southern trip.  Unfortunately we cannot take every player on our team; nor can we take every pitcher.  We are taking 13 of our 22 pitchers.  We have a good handful of guys who also deserve to travel and who may actually be just as good as (or even better than) the guys who are travelling.

In discussing these kind of things with the pitchers, I try to let them know that if they did not make the travel list, their future success is completely up to each of them as individuals.  Their continued motivation to work hard will help them to improve every day.  Their attitudinal response to this is perhaps more important than anything else.

The good thing about our schedule is that we have a huge schedule of JV games after we return to Michigan the first weekend of March.  Those guys not travelling south will have many opportunities to compete in those games.  Some of them will pitch well enough to get some quality varsity innings this season and set themselves up as players who will make our team better this year and in the next few years.

I'm looking forward to competing, but also to helping our entire pitching staff continue to improve their skills and mature as competitive college baseball players.  Opening day can't come soon enough for me.  It never gets old!!