Spring is just around the corner and that means a new season of Sinclair baseball will be kicking off shortly. Sinclair Baseball Coach Steve Dintaman and a few players were able to talk about how they are preparing and how they feel about the new season.
“It’s a new season so we have a lot of work going into it. We have worked since August. Weights, practices, mental game, team meetings. There is a lot that goes into it other than the two or three months that we play out of the year,” Dintaman said.
Last year the team set a school record with 46 wins and just fell a few games shy of being able to go to the World Series. During the course of winning 46 games, 22 of them came without suffering a single loss. The team went about an entire month without losing, even going against some tough teams on the road. The team captured their fifth conference in the past six years. Dintaman feels that the team could do that again and take it a step further.
“This year’s team has aspirations to get back to that point again. I think it’s definitely possible–as long we keep getting better game by game, we can make a run at it,” Dintaman said.
Dintaman went on to explain that even though they obviously want to be national champions, they haven’t gotten to the World Series. The team they lost to, that would have gotten them to the World Series, they had already beaten previously in the year. He told the team that they want to take it step by step in order to make it to their ultimate goal.
The team has a lot of returning players who were a part of their success and a good group of freshmen coming onto the team.
“Eric Hansman was a big part of our offense last year. He played first base for us as well as some outfield, and hit as the clean-up hitter as he looks to build on his numbers that he had last year and he is very capable of doing so. A lot of these guys have really matured physically and some of them are double the size they were last year,” Dintaman said.
Just like their coach, the players have set the bar high for what they want to achieve following their incredibly successful season last year.“
“I think we have a strong core group of sophomores that will definitely lead the team in that direction,” Hansman said, who grew up in Vandalia.
“I also believe, what Eric said, our sophomore guys are very connected, we have a very strong bond together. Not only that, but we have a connection between the whole team in general, I think a little bit better than last year. We only needed a couple more games to make it to the World Series and we’ll see if we can do it this year,” says Keenan Carter, a sophomore catcher out of Middletown.
Coach Dintaman is very optimistic about the upcoming season and pitching is one of the many reasons why. He explains how pitching has a ton of experience and a lot of depth as they enter the season.
“Two guys that stand out on the mound who are returning from last year are Mitch Asman and Mason Aelker. Mitch is a right-handed pitcher out of Elder High School. Last year he was one of our fixtures in the bullpen. This year he is bigger, stronger, and faster. Asman will be entering our rotation as a top four starter. The other guy is Aelker who is a left-handed pitcher. Another hammer in the bullpen who had a big breaking ball. He is a big situation guy so if we had the bases loaded we would get him in to get us out of it,” says Dintaman.
The Tartans have already opened up their season down in Georgia and are sitting at a record of 2-2 as of March 5th.
Matt Summers
Reporter