A look at USU baseball
Coming off a discouraging season, the USU baseball team is ready to show it is a vastly improved team this year.
Last year proved to be difficult as the team lost a number of key players from the previous season.
However, recent additions such as short-stop Alex Davis, right fielder Cody Spradlin, and pitcher Clay Sagers have the team optimistic about the upcoming season and determined to send a message early to the rest of the conference that USU is back.
“We spent all of last spring rebuilding and now we’ve got a good group of guys out here that can play with anyone in the conference and the junior college teams in the area as well,” team president Orion Bell said.
Coach Bret Al-Imari feels that the biggest strength and improvement over last year’s team is experience. Many players on the team played at the junior college level, which will give them an advantage over other club teams.
“You can go around the diamond and find players like Greg Palmer who played at Blue Mountain Community College. He is definitely the best defensive catcher that we’ll see playing at this level all year,” Al-Imari said.
Greg’s brother Ryan Palmer also played at Blue Mountain Community College and will be the starting third baseman. Pitcher Clay Sagers transferred from Trinidad State, which is one of the best junior college programs in the nation.
“We’ve definitely got a lot of guys that are capable of playing somewhere else but they chose an education to play here,” Al-Imari said.
Offensively the team should have no problem filling up the scoreboard. Bell, who is beginning his fourth year on the team, was the leader in nearly every offensive category last year. Davis, Spradlin, Blake Terry and the Palmer brothers all have excellent offensive ability as well.
“Our hitting is very solid,” Bell said. “We have guys who can hit the ball for power and for average. Teams will have difficulty keeping us from scoring.”
Adam Blackham and Sagers are the elite pitchers in an otherwise weak rotation. USU hopes to strengthen their pitching as it is by far their biggest weakness.
USU is part of the Western Mountain Conference in the National Club Baseball Association. The conference also features Boise State, Weber State, Idaho State and Montana Sate.
The team particularly looks forward to their conference showdowns with rival Weber State that always provides for a very heated match-up. There definitely is not much love between the two teams.
“A few years ago punches were thrown, so I wouldn’t say it’s a friendly rivalry by any means,” Bell said. “Off the field some guys on that team and some guys on this team are friends but it’s definitely a heated rivalry on the field. We do everything we can to win. It’s been frustrating the last few years. We’ve snatched defeat from the claws of victory more than once.”
Bell and the rest of his teammates feel that will change this year.
“This year we will be much more competitive. We have guys driven to win. They hate losing. They want to win no matter what. We’ll score runs, and as long as our pitchers can keep us in games we’ll have a chance to win every single game this year,” Bell said.
The team faces Idaho State this Saturday at the Providence Field at noon. Games are free.