Opinion: Baseball finally finding a much needed chemistry

Caleb Burggraaf
Sports Columnist

Mesa State’s baseball squad has built a tradition of being the best team in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference for the last five years. The teams have always been able to rise to the top and play well time after time. This year’s team was supposed to be another addition to the line of successful teams that have played for coach Chris Hanks.  However, the team has underperformed.
They went into series after series with high hopes and good intentions and rarely came out with a victory. Sure they have put out winning streaks in the past, but when you look at those streaks, they were against teams at the bottom of the RMAC. Yes, they swept CCU, Regis, and Mines, but those teams have a combined record of 21 and 64 in conference. Against the meat of the conference, the Mavs were mediocre.
The woes really come down to team chemistry.
In years past, the Mavericks have had a core group of players who had been playing together for years. Case in point, last year the team had an amazing 18 seniors. This season that number dropped to eight. The team had more chemistry last year and had to try to come back this season and bring it all together with a set of fresh faces. Up to this point, it has not had much success.
Now there is a bright spot out there for fans of the team. The Mavericks finally have begun to show some signs of wanting to play as a team. In the last series against the number seven team in the country, the New Mexico Highlands Cowboys, the Mesa State players showed the grit, determination and resolve that it takes to build a team.
Their pitching staff finally threw consistently through an entire series and the fielders made the fewest errors they have made all season. Those factors combined with the fact that the batters stopped trying to win the games all by themselves resulted in their first convincing series win against a good team.
Now the question that faces the Mavericks is can this new found team balance last to the end of the season and into the playoffs. Up next the team has to take on a tough Dixie State team that swept Mesa in the first series of the season. This matchup will be the test that will determine whether the Mavs will have what it takes to make a true run at a regional title. If they can stay together and learn from the success they had against Highlands, than this is a team that can play with anyone in the country.  If the team resorts to the individual efforts they gave in the early part of the season, then there is no chance for this team to do anything but come back home after the first game of the RMAC championships and wonder where they went wrong. The talent for a big run is there, but without chemistry and a team concept, talent means nothing.

Caleb Burggraaf is the sports director at KMSA 91.3. You can listen to him on the Locker Room, Wednesday at 4.
cburggra@mesastate.edu

Categorised in: Sports

This post was written by critedev