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Baseball Previews: Greencastle, North Putnam turn to large freshmen classes to fill lineup card gaps, rotations and production left by graduates
Greencastle was a team in transition in the 2022 baseball season, having had to replace 10 seniors from the 2021 squad.
The Tiger Cubs managed to finish 15-11 behind a squad led by county player of the year Keifer Wilson but often lacked some of the consistency the squad had in past seasons.
For the 2023 season, Greencastle will have to replace four more key contributors and will be relying on a large freshman group to assert themselves in the lineup according to head coach Ben Wells.
“Our guys have been doing what they do,” Wells said. “We had quite a few seniors last year that we’re productive for us like Keifer, DJ (Wells), Ben (Huff) and Evan (Alexander) but we’ve got high expectations for our current seniors as well.”
Chase Carrington and Ethan Hamm lead a seven-strong senior group that includes Wade Hamilton, Ryan Beauchamp, Cooper Williams, Boyd Ensley and Logan Peters with Wells pleased with how the upperclassmen were working not only individually but with the large group of newcomers.
“Chase and Ethan have the most experience while Boyd is working hard and looking good early on, Wade is a great leader and Cooper is doing some nice things,” Wells said. “We trust these guys, even if they don’t have as much experience as players in the past.
“We have a large freshman group but they have a lot of talent. We’ve got a lot of expectations of them as some of those guys will be stepping in and starting on varsity from day one.”
Junior Owen Huff and sophomores Jaylen Bushong and Treyten Clark started throughout the 2022 campaign and offer plenty of experience across the diamond.
“Owen is a big returner for us, having started every game last year, and he is among the guys we are counting on to pick up some of the innings we lost,” Wells noted. “Treyten comes back with a year of experience and we’re looking forward to him continuing his development from last year to this year.
“Jaylen was another guys who started every game as a freshman, so we have a good blend of five or six varsity guys with experience while sprinkling in some of our freshmen in.”
The remainder of the squad includes several upcoming freshmen in Connor Sullivan, Trevin Long, Jayce Spidel, Ashton Dayhuff, Sam Gooch and Nathan Sutherlin.
Dayhuff in particular will be a key cog in the lineup as Wells said the freshman had large shoes to fill in replacing Wilson at the catcher position.
“We’ve been fortunate the last five years to have first Ethan (Maier) and then Keifer behind the plate,” Wells said. “You can’t replace what Keifer brings as he did everything we asked him to do but once someone like that graduates, you have to find the next guy.
“We’ve been looking at Ashton, who has been handling our pitchers quite a bit, coming in after basketball practices to get acclimated with the guys and shows a lot of promise. We have a couple of others like Jaylen who can catch when needed and Jayce, who’ve been hurt a bit and we haven’t seen as much of him as I would like.
“Ashton does everything we ask, stays late to get extra work in and has the exact mentality and intangibles you need,” Wells added. “He also wants to win, is a leader on the field and has a bulldog mentality.”
Replacing Wilson on the mound was another area that would be tough to do though Wells said the pitching staff was in a good spot early in the year.
“We rode Keifer a lot and DJ had some good innings for us as well,” Wells pointed out. “We could give the ball to Keifer and know we’d get six or seven good innings out of him, which made my job easier, but we don’t have him this year.
“That said, our depth in the bullpen is deeper than it’s ever been. We expect Jaylen and Owen a lot of innings while we have two freshmen in Sam and Nathan that also will get a lot of work. Boyd is looking good on the mound and it is always helpful to have multiple lefties available.
“We see Chase throwing one or two innings in a closer-type role while a couple of other freshmen in Trevin and Jayce that we’ll give a couple of JV starts to and look to use later in the season,” Wells added.
With several players having entrenched themselves in the field last season, Wells said defensively the team was in a great spot.
“This feels like then best defensive team all-around that we’ll put on the field since I’ve been here,” Wells said. “We have so many guys that are baseball players and versatile.
“Our pitching will likely determine how our lineup shakes out each day, Owen, Treyten and Jaylen will be our main outfielders with Boyd and Wade getting some reps in as well while Ethan and Chase will take time at first and our younger guys will be manning the left side of the infield.”
In order to be challengers in the county and conference, Wells said the offense was a focal point early, both in trying to account for the loss of Wilson’s monster bat and the rest of the departed senior class production as the team looks to keep moving forward in 2023.
“For us, our pitching and defense look really good but we have to produce runs,” Wells said. “Our team speed is one of our major attributes as we have four or five of the fastest runners in the school playing baseball and we have to use that to our advantage.
“We haven’t been outside a lot to see live hitting but we’ve been looking pretty good. This is two years in a row where we need to replace a lot of production with guys like Nick (Sutherlin) and Brody (Whitaker) then on to Keifer, guys who hold seven offensive school records for Greencastle.
“We will rely on Treyten, Jaylen and our seniors to move it up a notch and our freshmen to produce, which they look like doing based on what I’ve seen,” Wells added. “Nathan, Sam, Trevin and Ashton all look good at the plate right now. We’re anxious to play and see what these guys can do.”
North Putnam
The Cougars relied heavily on a seven-strong senior class in 2022, a season that started off strongly as North Putnam was 7-2 at one point, though a late skid saw the team finish the season at 13-13.
Four key pieces return for the Cougars but the rest of the squad will skew much heavily on the younger side for head coach Chris Geeser’s squad in 2023.
“We had seven seniors, six of whom were key contributors, logged a lot of innings on the mound, defensive innings and accounted for a lot of hits and RBIs,” Geeser said. “At our fall call out meeting, I made a few slides, threw numbers on them and had the kids guess what the numbers were.
“By the second or third slide, they realized that it was the amount of hits, runs, innings and other stats that the senior class contributed. Part of coaching is adapting and we’ve made the most with our time getting ready for this season.
“We have four key cogs returning along with some talent in the freshmen and sophomore classes,” Geeser added. “There are guys that are going to have to eat up a lot of innings but will give us quality innings. We definitely have some things to work on before the madness starts but also some see some good things heading into this season.”
Seniors Brayden Monnett and Ian Patrick returns, joined by Camden Scott, while juniors Brogan Woodall and Jaylen Windmiller joined by Nathan Tefertiller and Braxton Mullis.
Beyond that is a large underclass including sophomores Kaden Helderman, Nikolas Miles, Nolan Augusta and Braxton Woodall along with a large freshmen group in Chase Barber, Jackson Andrews, Jayce Monnett, Brody Kinkead, Kyler Hankins, Christian Kramer, Alex McKenzie,
“Ian has seen some time in varsity the last couple of years but hadn’t gotten as much as he might otherwise have just because of the size of the senior class in front of him,” Geeser said. “He’s going to be a key contributor for us in the lineup, hopefully helping to make up some of those runs and hits.
“Brogan played left field every day for us last year but he and Brayden are our top-two catchers, so both of those guys will see time behind the plate. Both of them also pitch, so they’ll be there, at shortstop or anywhere else. Helderman will play outfield, maybe some at first base being a left hander and catching a little bit.
“All three are super utility guys and it’s easy to put them anywhere because of their baseball IQ as well as hand-eye coordination,” Geeser added. “Braxton and Christian are both guys that will see time at first base while Jayce and Alec are guys that will see time in the infield. “Nolan will see a lot of playing time, stepping into an every day role. Griffen, Nik, Chase, Jackson, Brody, Kyler, all of these young guys, have some talent and as we have 19 guys this year, you could see anyone at any place depending on who is pitching.”
While several spots in the lineup needed to be filled, it was on offense where Geeser said the younger guys would need to come through.
“Offense is definitely an area where we’re going to see a lot of new faces,” Geeser said. “Some of the younger guys should be able to transition in well do to having played fall ball and been hitting with us in the winter.
“We’ve got a lot of production to fill in that graduated for last year and maybe there will be some freshman sprinkled in there along with the sophomores, juniors and seniors. The biggest thing for high school kids is a drive to be perfect and put a lot of pressure on themselves, thinking only getting a hit is failure, but in baseball, going 3-for-10 is hall of fame worthy.
“We try to remind the kids to stay positive, to not get down after a missed at bat and not having a negative though going into their second, third and fourth at-bats,” Geeser added.
A large roster rollover comes with plenty of challenges in trying to get personnel settled in as well as finding a leadership group to help stabilize the dugout.
Geeser said that as practice has gone on, the group has begun to coalesce around one another and expected that to continue as the season gets under way Saturday against North Vermillion.
“One thing that I’ve been really happy to see in our last few practices is the team camaraderie is growing and, even in the intrasquad scrimmages, we wanted the guys to be competitive,” Geeser said. “There’s some friendly jawing but at the end of the day, the guys are picking each other up and the upperclassmen are helping the freshmen out, making sure they know what’s going on in a drill or where to position themselves.
“There are definitely going to be growing pains and we have some freshmen that are going to be stepping into some big roles. We play a pretty strong schedule with teams like Cascade, Parke Heritage, Danville and Crawfordsville. We’re hoping things go perfectly to plan when we send some of those freshmen out there but it’s part of the learning experience when things don’t go that way.
“We want to coach those kids up so that when something fails, we want them to know they’re not always going to fail,” Geeser added. “We want them to be able to brush it off, learn from it and apply it whenever their next on the mound, at the bat or in the field.”