The Tartan Pride baseball team has started the season with an impressive 15-2 run. The pitching has been excellent, the average run differential between teams just above five, and closing pitchers Travis Rowland and Cole Quilen have not blown a save. While happy with the record, Coach Dintaman thinks they could be much better.
“There is a lot of work to do—we have to get better. Offensively, picking up some pieces that are out for the year like Carrmicheal and Silvestri—those are big pieces in our lineup,” said Dintaman. “We were picked off two or three times this weekend. We’re just giving away outs in the base path, which is something we have not done before. We have to sharpen those things up.”
On a more positive note, freshman Nick Massey has proved to be an offensive force and has earned his role in the starting lineup from here on out. He is batting an impressive .415 and an on base percentage of .500, meaning he is getting on base every other at bat. He had three home runs in one game against Muskegon and has gotten a hit in 15 of the 17 games played this season. When offensive guys like Jimmy White move on to a four year college, someone has to step up to fill those shoes and Massey has done that so far.
“It is kind of one of those things that you expected. He’s a pretty confident kid—he has prepared well. He’s worked extremely hard to earn the right to be in the lineup every day. He had those opportunities and he has made the most of them. In your first year to have that good start, it does help guys settle down,” said Dintaman.
With only two losses in the books, and both of those defeats being by one run, one could think that those two were just flukes and can’t really take away much from it. Not only has Dintaman learned from those two games, but recently the team hasn’t been playing up to the standard of his liking.
“There’s been a couple games, especially here recently, that we have not played very well. We discussed that as if it was a loss. I told our guys, talking about Skip Bertman, the old LSU coach, four things can happen during a game: you play well and you can win, you play bad and you can win, you can win and play bad or you can lose and play bad,” said Dintaman.
Sometimes a team has some kind of inspirational story of a sick player or something to spark the team to do well. The Tartan Pride use DJ Khaled to get them going. DJ Khaled has become the team’s motivation.
“DJ Khaled is a major, major key—my guys love him, my guys quote him, my guys talk about him. It’s a lingo we use a lot in our program. We have this board before our first game and it’s like 28 practices until our opener. We come up with all these things to do to make sure we are 100 percent prepared and DJ Khaled made the list. Someone put [him] up on the board. We had to make sure we were focused on DJ Khaled before the season started,” said Dintaman.
Though Dintaman does not follow him on snapchat, he does check up on his Twitter and watch some vines.
“Another one,” said Dintaman.
Matthew Summers
Sports Editor