Bulldog Baseball gearing up for season looking to reload pitching staff

Preseason practices have begun for the Hampton-Dumont-CAL baseball team, which is looking to bounce back from last year’s 7-21 record.

This year’s pitching staff will have a different look compared to last year. After graduating most of the starting rotation, several underclassmen are likely to see the bulk of the action on the mound. Head Coach Matt Lokenvitz feels confident in several players to step up to the challenge.

“We’ll still bring back Jacob Mahler who’s got a few pitching experiences in there as a senior,” Lokenvitz says. “He’ll look to try to take another step up. But we’ve got a lot of really good sophomore pitchers right now in Blake Burrmaster and Will Vosburg, Eliah Cruz, those types of people. Conner Miller is coming back out, who did not play last year. He will add some innings for us on the mound as well. He’s been looking pretty good here early on in the season. We’ve got a lot of kids that didn’t have to pitch the last year or so because of those juniors and seniors we had the last two years that were throwing very well for us. So they’re gonna get back on the mound and try to ramp it back up for us a little bit. So I’m excited to see the development and the growth of where our pitching staff will be.”

Sophomore Blaek Burmester had four starts last year and William Vosburg had one. Both recorded most of their innings in relief. Burmester had a 9.33 ERA, and Vosburg’s was 7.00.

Heading into the second season of exclusively doubleheaders in North Central Conference play, Lokenvitz says pitching staff management will be crucial.

“It’ll be more interesting for us this year than it was last year. Again, we had a lot of upperclassmen pitchers last year and we could kind of tailor our pitching staff around that a little bit. This year with the younger staff who haven’t experienced that stuff yet, being able to pitch a game one and then play a position game two or or how that looks and what that works will be kind of the trick this year and balancing that. And then obviously next year, it’s changing up again a little bit with having the other four teams come into the conference, and then they’re switching into the divisions and how that’s all gonna look and what not. So this was a quick two years of this type of schedule, and then next year is gonna adjust a little bit from there.”