Brooks Hatch: Wednesday stuff Comments
More production duties tonight, but we have a new OSU baseball notes, and a few leftover items of interest from Tuesday’s media day.
First, the news:
The Beavers are ranked 25th in the Baseball America preseason Top 25 poll, released Wednesday . Two other Pacific-10 Conference schools are ranked; Arizona State is No. 14 and UCLA is No. 23.
It is the second consecutive year Baseball America has ranked OSU No. 25 in the preseason. Texas is ranked No. 1, followed by Virginia, LSU, Cal State Fullerton and Rice.
OSU was No. 10 in Collegiate Baseball’s preseason poll. OSU opens practice on Monday and starts the season at Hawaii on Feb. 19.
Now, some leftover notes:
* There are some decisions yet to be made about the pitching staff. The closer isn’t one of them. It’s junior Kevin Rhoderick’s job.
Rhoderick has 21 saves in 43 appearances, with 65 strikeouts in 50 innings two seasons. He’s sometimes inconsistent, but when he’s on, he’s almost untouchable.
Coach Pat Casey said Rhoderick has “matured” and will be even better in 2010, as he’s learned that he doesn’t have to throw the baseball past every single hitter, that outs – no matter the fashion – are what’s important.
“Sometimes when you’re young and throw hard, you don’t pay as much attention to the details of the game,” such as command, fielding, holding runners on, etc., Casey said. “Kevin realizes he wants to be more of a complete pitcher.
“He can be a dominant guy. He has really good stuff,” and did not allow an extra-base hit in his first 41 college appearances.
* Junior third baseman Stefen Romero hit .291 in 2009, with five homers and 51 RBIs, in his first season out of JC. One of those homers was a line shot off the left-field fence at PGE Park against Missouri State in the Pape Grand Slam, perhaps the hardest-hit ball this reporter saw all last season.
Romero said a season at OSU, and a summer with the Bourne Braves in the Cape Cod League, should prepare him for an even better season this spring.
” The quality of pitching in the Cape is phenomenal,” he said. ” I worked on a lot of things, saw great pitching.
“I also have a lot of scouting reports. I wrote down a lot (of information about) who I faced, and made sure I got some of the guys I’ll face this year in my notebook so I have a pretty good understanding on how they pitch to me” when they meet again this season.
“I’m pretty confident I’ll learn from what I did in the Cape, and also learn from last year.”
* Jared Norris and Sam Gaviglio said sophomore shortstop Carter Bell has stood out in the individual workouts.
Said Norris: “The way (Bell’s) swing is now, and the way he’s taking control of shortstop and the infielders, is impressive.”
Added Gaviglio: ” Carter took the initiative during bunt coverage (in Monday’s workout) to cover all the coverages. He knows what he’s doing. I was pretty impressed with that.”
Bell hit .294 (1-10) in spot duty last season and started some games at shortstop near the end of the season. His summer season with the Corvallis Knights was cut short by a concussion but he still hit .303 in 10 games.
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Some Corvallis Knights-related news (yes, there’s always something happening in the West Coast League):
* Former Knights manager Matt Dorey, now a scout in the Boston Red Sox organization, has been shifted to the South Texas/Louisiana area. He scouted the Pacific Northwest the past two seasons.
* Infielder Josh Hogan – an alum of the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Knights teams and certainly one of the franchise’s all-time players since its relocation here in 2007 – will be an assistant coach with the WCL’s first-year Cowlitz (Wash.) Black Bears, who will play at Lower Columbia CC in Longview.
A senior at Oregon, Hogan was a WCL all-star in 2007 and 2008.
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