Base­ball Looks to Main­tain Strong Mo­men­tum

MISHAWAKA—The Bethel Uni­ver­sity base­ball team started the sea­son on a his­toric 12 game win­ning streak. The team’s 12-0 start is the best start since Coach Seth Zart­man started coach­ing 17 years ago. 

“One of the big things I’ve no­ticed com­ing into this fall is our team cul­ture has taken a to­tal shift from where we were last year,” Zart­man said. “We had 14 re­turn­ers and we added 11 new faces to that mix, so…what we’ve seen with that par­tic­u­lar ra­tio­nale of what hap­pened, our (re­turn­ing) guys came into the fall with a fresh mind.” 

The team fin­ished the 2018-19 sea­son with an 11-29 record. Zart­man said the team did not work as well to­gether last sea­son. He em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of each player to do their job suc­cess­fully for team suc­cess to be ac­com­plished. 

One of the ma­jor im­prove­ments on the team came from the vet­eran play­ers. Zart­man said his ten se­niors help the younger play­ers along. 

An­other im­prove­ment from last sea­son to this sea­son is the pitch­ing staff. Se­nior Patrick Tubaugh said this year’s pitch­ing staff is deep. 

“That’s al­ready helped in hav­ing more op­tions,” Tubaugh said. “In the fall, there was­n’t too much weight put on any one guy to throw out of the bullpen.” 

Along with se­nior pitch­ers such as Justin Ras­mussen and Kory Goodrich, the bullpen added more pitch­ers. Ju­niors Justin Pullins and Cole Sear­les trans­ferred in from com­mu­nity col­leges, adding more bullpen arms. 

The chal­lenge for the pitch­ing staff this spring is get­ting ad­e­quate rest. Games are played on the week­ends in the fall, so pitch­ers get more time to re­cover. In the spring games, games are sched­uled through­out the week. 

Due to in­clement spring weather, some games are post­poned or can­celled. Zart­man said he is in­ter­ested to see how pitch­ers re­spond to play­ing on short rest. 

“It re­ally is the prepa­ra­tion of mak­ing sure that you have those bod­ies ready be­cause you know you’ll have to get to that bullpen at some point,” Zart­man said. 

On of­fense, the team’s col­lec­tive bat­ting av­er­age is .306. One of the key slug­gers this sea­son is Sear­les who is bat­ting .418 through 17 games. 

Zart­man said one of the strengths he has no­ticed is the pa­tience at bat. His play­ers are care­ful about when they swing the bat. He also said his mid­dle of the lineup is the strongest he has had in a while.  

But one weak­ness the bat­ting lineup has is be­ing afraid to take walks. 

“We tell our guys all the time: What­ever it takes to get on base, take it,” Zart­man said. “Don’t be afraid to take that walk…the fact that you walked means you were pa­tient.” 

While Bethel se­cured an un­de­feated fall record, the team started the spring with a 2-4 record. The mixed re­sult is due to in­con­sis­tent play and poor rou­tine plays. 

De­spite the ten­dency to blame one per­son for a loss, ju­nior out­fielder An­drew Mi­randa said it is a team ef­fort.  

“It’s a men­tal game,” Mi­randa said. “But we re­ally try to back each other up through it all.” 

Bethel will play their next seven games in Florida for the Russ­Matt Cen­tral Florida In­vi­ta­tional Feb. 29 to March 7. Three of those games will be a triple-header against con­fer­ence ri­val Grace Col­lege. 

“Those games are go­ing to be im­por­tant be­cause one, it’s the start of con­fer­ence play,” Mi­randa said. “Two, they swept us last year.”