VANCOUVER - With many of their key players returning, and what could be their best recruiting class ever according to head coach
Terry McKaig, the UBC Thunderbirds look poised to make another impressive playoff run in 2010.
They kick-off their campaign with their annual road trip through California beginning February 17 against Simpson University. UBC's first conference games are against Simpson February 26 and 27 and they open their home schedule on March 13 and 14 against the College of Idaho at Thunderbird Park.
The T-Birds celebrated the opening of their new on-campus field in style last season, leading the West Grouping with a 26-6 league record before winning the conference tournament as the host team, earning a berth in the National Championship Opening Round. However, an injury to ace starter
Mark Hardy during the playoffs stretched the pitching staff to its limit, and a dramatic 15-12 loss to Azusa Pacific in the Opening Round semi-finals ended UBC's season.
“We had a really good run last year,” said UBC head coach
Terry McKaig. “The injury to
Mark Hardy obviously hurt. It's tough not having your number-one pitcher going into the playoffs but Point Loma Nazarene (eventual winners of UBC's Opening Round group) was going to be tough either way. Even with Mark I don't know if we would have had enough horses to make a go of it but the experience gained was great. Most of our guys are back this year with that experience, which bodes well for us.”
The core of the pitching staff, including Hardy, will be back in T-Bird blue this season, and with some outstanding recruits joining the squad, McKaig thinks this may be the best pitching staff he has ever assembled.
Hardy led the staff with a 10-1 record and a 2.97 ERA, and
Eric Brown,
Taylor King and Dan Britton-Foster all had sub-3.50 ERAs to support their strong win-loss records as starters in 2009 while closer
Shawn Hetherington also returns as UBC's top late inning worker.
They will be joined by a host of talented new arms, including
Sheldon McDonald and
Brandon Kaye. McDonald pitched for the Northeastern Huskies two years ago, and has the stuff to challenge for a spot at the top of the rotation. Kaye, the half-brother of Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Scott Richmond, pitched for Douglas College in 2009 and was selected by the Jays in the 2009 MLB Amateur draft.
McKaig will be without a few of his big bats from last year though, as Jon Syrnyk, Ryan Pilgrim were lost to graduation and Scott Webster not eligible to play this season.
In addition to his solid work in centre field, Syrnyk led the T-Birds with 45 RBIs, seven home runs and 24 steals, to go along with his .333 batting average. Pilgrim was second on the team with a .342 average, and Webster had a great year both at first base and at the plate, where he posted a .326 average and had zero errors to anchor a dominant infield defence.
Despite losing the heart of his order, McKaig is optimistic about his talented crop of new recruits and their ability to make up for some of that lost offence.
“The young guys we have coming in here are talented kids, and it's going to be a different offence this year,” said McKaig. “Our goal is going to be to have tough outs one through nine. Losing Pilgrim and Syrnyk is definitely going to hurt and we're not going to have the big three-four-five hitters, but the way we can make up for that is for the rest of the order to be a lot better than it was last year.”
Among the lengthy list of newcomers is
Blake Carruthers, a redshirted freshman at Central Washington last year who will likely be taking on the daunting task of replacing Syrnyk in centre field.
Ryan Taylor and
Keaton Briscoe are two freshmen middle infielders who are in line to take over for seniors
Sammie Starr and
Alex White after they graduate at the end of the year. Taylor played with the Canadian Thunderbirds of the Eastern Canadian Premier League, while Briscoe comes to UBC via the North Shore Twins, who are three-time defending champions of the B.C. Premier Baseball League.
With proven veterans like Starr, White,
Mitch Grossell,
Greg Densem,
Mike Elias,
Nic Lendvoy and
Bob Foerster returning for the new campaign, competition for playing time will be fierce, but McKaig won't hesitate to throw his young guns down on the front lines if they earn their opportunities.
“What I like about our team is that there is so much depth that for our older guys, if you take a day off and start to struggle, there is a younger kid waiting to take your spot and he's a pretty good player,” McKaig said. “We're not going to have a hard time throwing those younger guys in there to send that message that no matter who you are, you really gotta bust it because there is a legitimate guy behind you.”
With a pitching staff that is shaping up to be dominant, and a line-up with incredible depth across the board, the T-Birds are set to defend their West Grouping crown and take another step forward in their chase for a spot in the 2010 AVISTA-NAIA World Series.
