Feb. 18, 2008
The Georgia Tech baseball team opens the 2008 season Feb. 22 vs. Youngstown State. Every day, leading up to the first pitch, a Yellow Jacket player blogs about the upcoming season. Today’s blog is by junior LHP Michael Hutts.
We concluded this weekend with our last intrasquad game before the season and with only three practices left, the team is more than ready to face some new competition.
The hitters are looking better than they have all year and will definitely be going into the season with confidence. Although we had a little trouble finding Jason Garofalo in the grass behind second base, he contributed to the weekend with a grand slam and a number of other base hits.
Jeff Rowland led the freshman class with his speed, and Derek Dietrich and Chase Burnette showed they can hit for power. All the freshman hitters have shown me that they can add great depth to our line-up. The upperclassmen have done a great job leading the young guys and so have the coaches. (Assistant) Coach (Bryan) Prince seems to have really helped our hitters improve and they really enjoy working with him.
The pitching staff looks like they are ready for next weekend. The starters have their pitch counts up where they need to be to start the season and Hicks and Rulon have led the way out of the pen. Just like the hitters, the freshmen pitchers have been throwing well and should give the staff the depth we need to win five games a week.
Duncan, Burns, and Tersch could possibly make up the goofiest weekend rotation in the country, but may also be the most dominant. These three have already proven that they can help us win a lot of games this year. The staff loves having (assistant) Coach Tom Kinkelaar around and aside from his humor he has really helped us fine-tune our mechanics in preparation for the season.
The team has grown close over the long preparation for the season and I hope this will give us the edge we need to get back to Omaha. On behalf of the team, thanks to all you fans and parents that have been out there supporting us during our preseason practice and we look forward to seeing the rest of you Friday. Four days `til the season opener…GO JACKETS!!!
