La Salle baseball looks to move past departed seniors and snowstorms

Posted 3/28/17

Here, bunting practice is on the docket at a La Salle practice. The Explorers are in Florida this week for a spring training stint. by Jonathan Vander Lugt The cold weather, to this point, has done a …

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La Salle baseball looks to move past departed seniors and snowstorms

Posted

Here, bunting practice is on the docket at a La Salle practice. The Explorers are in Florida this week for a spring training stint.

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

The cold weather, to this point, has done a number on the practice schedules of local baseball teams.

Just as Mother Nature seemed like she was going to turn the page into spring, she dumped about eight inches of snow and two weeks worth of 40-degree days on the area—and at precisely the time baseball teams are trying to get on the field.

It’s something that Kyle Werman and his La Salle College High School Explorers will have to overcome.

“We were out for the four days of tryouts,” Werman said. “We were able to play intersquad and our pitchers threw live, but obviously it’s not the same.”

“Nobody has a chance to really show what they can do,” he went on “Outside of being against their peers, they’re not in that position. Obviously, you have a little bit of a feeling for where guys are going to fit, but it’s been frustrating that we really haven’t been able to let that happen organically yet.”

Last year’s La Salle squad finished 8-4 in conference play, good for a third-place finish in the Catholic League. There is a lot of returning experience on the mound—Zach Moretski, Kade Jones, Joe Miller, and Hunter McGarvey all figure to bear significant innings after doing so last year—but in the field, there are questions.

Gone are Kyle Hemcher and Langston Livingston, stalwarts of the lineup. The latter is continuing his playing career at St. Joe’s University.

“Those were big guys for us,” Werman said. “It’s hard to fill their spots. There’s a bunch of guys that have ability. You’re trying to see who separates. Every year is a new year. Guys step up, and it’s my job to put those pieces into play. It’s all I can do, and hopefully we find the right mix.”

To do that, they’ve been doing a mixture of work in the gym, on the tennis court and La Salle’s wrestling-room-turned-batting-cage. It’s not ideal, but it works well enough, according to Mike Chiaradonna, one of La Salle’s handful of returning position players.

“Not being able to get out on the field sucks,” he said, for lack of a better term. “You can’t do infield-outfield, you can’t see the ball off the bat, but we’ve been trying to replicate that as well as possible.”

“There’s definitely some benefit in being able to rest, and it helps too that our coaches are able to get a real up-close look at everyone rather than have it be spread out on the field,” he went on.

“There, they’d only get to see two or three kids hitting at a time, or the one or two pitchers throwing at a time,” Chiaradonna said. “I think the guys are getting more intimate feedback.”

Chiaradonna is a senior, and will be manning the outfield—centerfield, most likely—for the Explorers. He said that the most important aspect that his team needs to improve is its cohesiveness.

“We just had a Navy SEAL come in and preach some team-building things,” he said. “I think this year, the biggest thing is playing unselfishly. This year, it’s really about playing for each other. You’ve got to work with your teammates, and when something’s hard, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to respond—how to think about each other before you think about yourself.”

He and his teammates spent (and are spending, as of press time) the week in Florida, hopefully to catch some nice weather and get a high volume of at-bats.

Werman, now in his third year at the head of the program, mostly knows how the drill goes. By the time the Explorers get back, it’ll already be April and they’ll have under two months to play a whole lot of baseball.

“Adjusting to the shorter window of league play, that’s a challenge,” he said, in comparison to the 40-odd games a college team plays. His last gig before working at La Salle was as an assistant coach at St. Joe’s.

“You have to squeeze things in sometimes, because you don’t have the quantity of at-bats to let things work their way out organically,” he continued. “You’ve got to find ways to make adjustments.”

That’s what baseball is—a game of adjustments. Time will tell if he and the Explorers make the right ones.

Jonathan Vander Lugt can be reached at vanderlugt.chlocal@gmail.com

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