Winning 36 games in a season is impressive, but The Saint Leo Lion’s baseball team will look to improve upon a year in which they were very talented on offense, but lacked the pitching to pull it through.
With an overall Earned Run Average of 4.14, and an in conference ERA of 5.77, pitching has been one of the big focuses of Head Coach Sean O’Connor.
“We better improve there, or it’s going to be a long season. We did not pitch well, at all, last year. We pitched well early on, did not pitch well in the conference,” said Coach O’Connor. “We did not pitch well in big games.”
Even though the team did perform exceptionally on offense, batting .326 overall and bashing out 58 home runs, the offense alone cannot carry a team.
“We tried to hit our way into winning and that usually doesn’t work,” said Coach O’Connor.
This year it will be even harder, as it is unlikely the team can repeat its power output from last season.
“We’re a little bit of a different team offensively than we were,” said Coach O’Connor. “We’re a little bit quicker, I think we’re gonna be a little bit more offensively where we can run a little more. I think we’ll hit our share of home runs, I think we have power to be able to do that but I don’t think that going into the season I would say we’re going to be a home run hitting team.”
The team will look to changing their style to compensate from the anticipated drop in power numbers. Talking about what differences in particular, Coach O’Connor emphasized his player’s base running abilities will help carry the day.
“If we hit more doubles, we’ll be a much better team than if we hit 58 home runs,” said Coach O’Connor. “We were strong, we had power. We were slow as molasses, we didn’t have a lot of speed. I think this year we have a little less power, but we have a lot of speed.”
All of these improvements will be needed in a loaded Sunshine State Conference. Not only does the conference hold the defending national champions, the University of Tampa Spartans, but six of the last ten national champions have come out of the Sunshine State Conference.
“There’s no doubt that this is the best conference in the United States in Division 2 baseball,” said Coach O’Connor.
It will be a tough road ahead, with preseason polls predicting the Lions to finish tied for 5th in the conference, which would match last season’s results.
There is hope, though. With the conference being as tough as it is, the schedule will be great preparation for any potential post season challenges.
“We don’t worry about Tampa, we worry about everybody. Every team in this conference is good,” said Coach O’Connor. “If you can get to the regionals, you can win the National Championship, that’s really what it is. The hard part is getting out of this conference.”
The problem is, despite very good records the last three seasons, the Lions haven’t gotten out of the conference.
“We’ve won 104 games in 3 years and haven’t played in a postseason game,” said Coach O’Connor.
Coach O’Connor expects success though, and credits the University with allowing that success to flourish.
“With the things that we’re given here at Saint Leo, I mean, this is pretty nice. We got a pretty nice facility, we’re fully funded scholarship wise. We’re given all the tools, Saint Leo gives everything we need,” said Coach O’Connor.
