Cedarville College
Yellow Jackets
1999 Baseball
Season Outlook
The Cedarville College baseball team will take to the field in 1999 with a squad that can't be much younger. Norris Smith enters his seventh season as head coach with a 20-man roster that is without a senior and contains just one junior. Seven sophomores and no fewer than 12 freshmen help to make up the rest of the club that continues a rebuilding process.
"We have some new players that have some ability and it's no secret they will have to contribute immediately for us to be successful," Smith explained. "It's going to be a maturing process, but we think we can be competitive."
The lone junior is captain Nathan Verwys, who played one year at Cornerstone College in Michigan before transferring to Cedarville. He batted .253 in his first season as a Yellow Jacket with 11 runs batted in. He'll play the outfield and see some time on the mound.
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| Micah Hutchins |
Sophomore Trevor Creeden, who is the only left-handed thrower on the club, will pitch and play first base. He is Cedarville's top returning hitter after batting .277 last spring with only three strikeouts.
The three other returning players are sophomores Phil Hamilton, Tim Sastic, and Micah Hutchins. Hamilton saw action in 21 games, Sastic batted .234 in 25 appearances, and Hutchins drove in a team-high 14 runs and tied for second with 13 runs scored.
The schedule again promises to be demanding for the Yellow Jackets with perennial powers Mount Vernon Nazarene and Ohio Dominican headlining the American Mideast Conference loop. Cedarville will also face longtime rivals Wilmington and Wittenberg.
The Jackets will play their home games at the Municipal Stadium Annex in Springfield, Ohio while construction on their new baseball field is completed on the north end of campus. It will include a natural turf field with a Diamond Pro surface on the infield and on the 15-foot warning track that leads up to an eight-foot high wooden fence. The outfield dimensions are 330 feet down each line and 402 feet to centerfield. The site includes 50-foot long dugouts, a press box, electronic scoreboard, and seating for 500 people. The entire field has drainage and it includes an automatic irrigation system.
