Note: Each day this week, White & Blue Review will take a look at the upcoming Creighton Baseball season.
The Jays return both starters on the left side of the infield in Jimmy Swift and Elliot Soto, but have huge question marks on the right side after the departure of two Gold Glove winners. Second baseman Vicente Cafaro signed with the Texas Rangers, while first baseman Darin Ruf was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s quite a departure from a year ago, when Creighton started the same four players in every game.
Soto, a junior, returns as the team’s second-leading hitter, while leading the team in sacrifices and stolen bases to go along with his strong defensive play at short (.968 fielding percentage). He posted seven doubles, a triple and 26 RBIs en route to becoming a first team all-MVC selection.
He led the league in at-bats (239), finished third in plate appearances (271) and had the second-most sacrifice bunts among MVC players (11). Soto had a hit in all but 10 games and posted a 23-game hit streak from March 24-April 29, hitting .347 (35-101) over that span; the streak was five short of a Bluejay record. He had 21 multi-hit and five multi-RBI games, and also had three, four-hit games (March 7 vs. Albany, March 14 vs. South Dakota State and May 22 vs. Missouri State) to tie a career high. And Soto played in the prestigious Cape Cod League this past summer, suiting up for the Hyannis Mets.
Also returning with Soto is Swift; the junior had a breakout campaign in 2009 after seeing limited action in his redshirt freshman season. Swift was one of five Bluejays to start every game and hit over .300, as he posted a .301 average as the starter at third. He was named Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week on March 30, and earned MVC Scholar-Athlete of the Week honors on April 2. At season’s end, he was named to the MVC All-Tournament Team at third base.
Swift had three hit streaks of seven games, and batted .500 in the second of those three (from March 21-29). He hit .413 (19-46) in a 13 game stretch (from March 21 to April 7) in which he hit safely in 12 of 13 games, and he had 15 multi-hit games and seven multi-RBI games.
Season highlights included belting his first career home run in the season opener at Sam
Houston State and recording his first career double in the next game. He had a career-high four hits against South Dakota State on March 15, and batted .462 (6-13) with five runs over four games at Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
Senior Ian Dike and junior Trever Adams are battling for the starting job at first base; Adams is also in the competition for the left field spot. Dike played in 49 games for Creighton last season, with most of his at-bats coming at designated hitter but also played some in the outfield. He had a .266 average with two home runs, 11 RBI, and four doubles.
Adams is a transfer from Hutchinson Community College, and as we broke down in the outfield preview, he holds the Hutchinson Community College record for doubles in a season with 23. He batted .383 over his two years at Hutchinson, batting an impressive .451 his sophomore season. Adams also hit eight home runs, drove in 63 runs and stole 13 bases that year while starting 51 games.
The other two returning infielders are sophomore Zane Hinkel and redshirt freshman Bobby Lewis. Hinkel played in 11 games last season, while Lewis did not see any action but is expected to provide depth at first base.
Second base is a three-way battle between two newcomers (juniors Michael Mutcheson and Vince Bellino) and a freshman (Alex Staehely). Mutcheson comes to Creighton after
two years at New Mexico Junior College, where he hit .353 with 11 home runs, 58 RBIs and
41 stolen bases. Bellino, an Omaha native, redshirted in 2009 after transferring in from Skyline Community College. Meanwhile, Staehely comes in as a true freshman after a successful high school career at Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois. He was a two-time, first team all-conference pick there, and played last summer with the Downers Grove Longshots traveling team.
Creighton’s only other newcomer to the infield is freshman Joey Long, who earned all-conference honors his senior season for Rockford Boylan High School in Belvidere, Illinois.
Without Cafaro and Ruf, the newcomers on the right side of the Jays infield have some big shoes to fill. Luckily, they appear more than capable, and the returning players on the left side offer at least some stability.