Forget about the Edwardsville series against Butler.
Forget about the Bloody Sunday against Georgetown.
Forget about the Cal season finale in which Georgetown and Seton Hall amicably agreed to not play a third game, ultimately ending Creighton’s season.
It’s all in the past.
The 2019 season has a lot of hope. It has a lot more promise than the years previous.
Most importantly, it holds an opportunity for the Bluejays to reach the promised land of NCAA Tournament baseball, a road that could potentially end in their home ballpark.
It all starts this weekend against Arkansas-Little Rock.
Ed Servais’s veteran ballclub was picked to finish 2nd behind St. John’s. They received one lonely vote from St. John’s skipper Ed Blankmeyer – a formality considering the coach couldn’t pick his own squad. Baseball America’s preseason prediction had the Jays third behind St. John’s and Seton Hall, yet the post was riddled with questionable statements.
The preseason player of the year was split between Connor Grammes of Xavier – who slashed 330/517/375 last season with 10 dongshots and 27 RBI on the season – and Will Robertson – who slashed 333/641/412 last season while hanging 12 dongs and pushing 59 RBI into the scorebook.
The preseason pitcher of the year was Ricky DeVito from Seton Hall. DeVito shoved against conference competition, amassing a 0.75 ERA with 4 wins in his six starts. Probably a fair assessment here.
Creighton has a lot to prove this season. They’ve already lost starting third baseman Thomas Luevano to an UCL injury he suffered in summer baseball. They’ve got one of the deepest bullpens in the conference. They have contact and power hitters all throughout the lineup card. They’ve got a weekend starting staff that’s got a bit of experience in Mitch Ragan, Denson Hull, and Evan Johnson.
Will Robertson (WBR/Mike Spomer)
Most importantly, they have the best baseball player the Jays have seen since the likes of Nicky Lopez, Mike Gerber, and Joey Bowens. They’ve got an All-American according to D1 Baseball and Baseball America. They’ve got a player that’s changed the offensive philosophy of his own coach, with Ed Servais saying about him, “(He) doesn’t hit a lot of majestic high fly balls, most of his home runs are line drives, so I’d like to see a lot of our hitters adapt that.” They’ve got a guy that’s played with and against the best players the college game has to offer and excelled in his position.
The Creighton Bluejays have Will Robertson. According to Servais, Robertson was a mighty fine draw for scouts during the fall camp as they flocked to see the kid from Loose Creek, Missouri, blast laser beams off the barrel of his bat. He’s likely the most talked about player in the conference and there’s good reason, too.
According to Terry Cahill from Baseball America:
“Robertson had a breakout 2018, first as a sophomore at Creighton, where he hit .333/.412/.641 with 12 home runs, and then in the Cape Cod League, where he hit .300/.380/.435. Along the way, he established himself as a prospect to watch and he was this year voted a Preseason All-American by major league scouting directors. Robertson, a lefthanded hitter, has above-average raw power and his bat control and level swing enables him to make a lot of hard contact.”
He’s a game changer, yet he’s not alone in that regard. Second baseman Isaac Collins returns for another year. Collins remains one of the more difficult Jays to get out as he posted a .381 OB% while drawing a team-high 36 walks. It’s Collins’s deftness with the leather that gets him the most accolades from Servais, since his emphasis typically relies on a dominant tandem at second and short.
Isaac Collins (WBR/MIke Spomer)
Collins committed just 5 errors last season while completing 114 assists and 98 putouts. His partner in crime, Jack Strunc, gets a slew of credit as well since he made an error just 3 times last season.
Servais said of the tandem:
“Well it’s nice to have Isaac (Collins) and Jack (Strunc) in the middle, those guys are going to continually get better. I think Jack (Strunc) is set up for a really big year, we’ve just got to keep him healthy. Last year he probably played 20 games or so where he wasn’t quite healthy but he did it for the betterment of the team. It’s nice to know that we’re pretty strong up the middle.”
Parker Upton, the junior from Grand Island, will patrol centerfield in Clark Brinkman’s stead. Upton’s athleticism and incredible ability to bunt the ball has made him one of the most celebrated Bluejays within the locker room. It was his hitting that’s been his kryptonite and apparently that’s been fine-tuned a bit since last season.
Servais said of Upton:
“We all know what Will Robertson can do obviously, but we’re very anxious to see if we can get Parker Upton back on track. He had a very good freshman year and the last couple of weeks we’ve moved Parker to centerfield and he performed very well both offensively and defensively. He finished strong, he had a lot of good AB’s in scrimmages and he looks like a much different player than he did last year.”
First base will be occupied by Evan Spry and Jason Allbery. Allbery started every game last season at first and Spry came on late as a designated hitter.
Servais likes Spry in certain situations, noting:
“There’s a lot of room for these guys, hopefully we can develop some depth so we might play him at first a little bit, put him at DH a little bit, and just look at match-ups where we can put him in a situation where he has to match-up… He’s a stronger player now, he got a lot of at-bats this summer with the wood, and he’s progressing nicely but it’s nice to have a little depth.”
Ryan Mantle, JuCo transfer and former Creighton Prep player Will Hanefin, and Kearney native Jared Wagner will battle for the last remaining outfield spot. It’s likely Mantle’s to have since his bat is a vital weapon in the lineup, but Hanefin and Wagner showed out during fall camp to make it a pretty tight race.
At catcher, Servais has what he refers to as a “three-headed monster” in Garrett Gilbert, Dave Vilches, and Owen Richter. Servais said that all three have valuable traits and only with playing time will he be convinced one way or the other on who fills Mike Emodi’s shoes. Servais mentioned the rich history of the position with the Jays and believes that any one of the three can propel themselves to that rarified air.
As far as pitching is concerned, Servais seems sold on the talents of righty senior Evan Johnson. Johnson didn’t plug a lot of innings last season, logging just 13 innings and posting a 6+ ERA. His summer was an overall success, with Johnson getting shipped to the Northwoods League where he posted a 5-0 record with a 1.80 ERA, amassing 57 strikeouts and 21 walks in 60 innings pitched.
Johnson will be joined by seniors Mitch Ragan – a Millard West alum – and Denson Hull. Ragan threw 77 innings last season, posting a 3.74 ERA with 64 strikeouts and 36 walks. Hull, coming off of a torn meniscus that sidelined him for all of the 2018 season’s fall camp, bounced back from a rough start but posted a 4.26 ERA with 20 strikeouts and 11 walks in his mid-week starts.
The bullpen is absolutely loaded. The Jays return lockdown closer Bobby Kametas – who was struck with mono early on last season that sidelined him for a bunch of save opportunities – at full health. He’s a powerful weapon to have, yet has a helluva set-up man in Jonah Smith, who took over for Kametas when he was ill. The two combined for 12 saves in 52.3 innings pitched.
Mitch Boyer will likely be the 7th inning guy, or saved for fireman situations in case either starter gets hurt. His newfound arm angle proved to be mighty effective last season as he went on to post a 2.70 ERA in just 26 innings pitched. Justin Wick will appear as a LOOGY when needed, yet his ability to put break on seemingly every pitch he throws leaves him a valuable weapon regardless of the batsmen.
Coach Servais said of his bullpen:
“At this point last year we didn’t have any idea how our bullpen was going to work. Bobby Kametas did not pitch last fall. Jonah Smith was new to the program. Mitch Boyer was trying a new arm slot. Justin Wick wasn’t throwing yet in the fall. This year, we know that Bobby can do it, we know Jonah and what he can do, we know that Mitch can really be successful from that lower slow, Justin Wick is healthy, and he can be that situational lefty that we’re looking for.”
John Sakowski, Nate Shoemaker, and Ryan Connolly all logged some innings last year as well.
There will be a lot of new faces as well. Coach Servais listed the new crop of pitchers that have intrigued him:
“Ben Dotzler, a JC transfer from Iowa Western, who has been part of that successful program over the last few years, and a couple freshmen – Dylan TeBrock a right-hander who came to us a little injured but is now healthy again, and then a nice looking left-hander out of Chicago named Paul Bergstrom, and another right-hander out of Denver by the name of Ryan Windham.”
I’ve got the #BIGEASTBASEBALLFEVER and it’s getting hotter!
There’s no question that the BIG EAST needs to make a change to avoid seasons plagued with rainouts. Coach Servais went into his annual meeting with fellow conference coaches last fall and began pitching ideas on how to accomplish this.
He noted that it was unanimous that what happened last year probably shouldn’t happen again. As if it were a gift from the Baseball Gods themselves, Servais made his pitch to add six more conference games to each team’s slate.
“We’re looking at expanding our schedule. We’re trying very hard to get a 24-game conference schedule instead of 18 and I think it’s going to happen not this year, not next year, but three years from now. We’ll play another team twice. We’ll play a home-and-home, say with Butler, and we’d have two teams that we go home-and-home and we’d play everyone else once… I don’t think 18 games is really enough to come up with a conference winner and come up with the top four teams. In baseball, being such a unique sport, I think you have to play more than 18 – or 15 or 16 like it’s been the last couple of years.”
I don’t know how many people aren’t on board with this idea but it’s likely less than zero. I want more BIG EAST baseball and I want it (three years from) NOW!
Out with the bunt, in with the #laserdongs
There’s been a growing trend among professional and college coaches to adjust how their players approach the plate. The new wave is all about lifting the ball and putting air underneath it to make it go further than, say, the pitcher or the third baseman creeping in after getting burned by back-to-back-to-back-to-back bunts.
Coach Servais understands this and he’s beginning to sense that his players are burdened with hitting the ball really hard:
“If you really look at the history of the program over the last 4-5 years, we don’t bunt as much as we used to. I think last year we might’ve had 34 sacrifice bunts. Back in my first couple years we were getting 80 to 90 to 100 sacrifice bunts.
So we’re looking at our team and we’ll adjust to what we have with our team, obviously this year we have a veteran group. We have older hitters. We have a little bit more power. So I think we’ll se a little more of that where we don’t rely so much on the bunt game. I think we’re still going to try to be an action team, still try to create hit-and-run situations, and hopefully we can get Jack (Strunc) and Isaac (Collins) on the basepaths so they can steal some bags too.
You’ll see fewer bunts and you’ll see more of the guys swing or battle up there because that’s the kind of players they are… I think this year there’s some potential in there like last year of creating more power; not just home runs but extra-base hits too. That’s what we think this team will provide for us.”
Servais touched a bit on the new trends in baseball:
“They’re pretty aware of the new swing path that a lot of the hitters are having now, so we don’t really have to teach it much. Also the kids have started to develop that on their own. They’re very cognizant of launch angles, spin rates, and those sorts of things. When you’re playing most of your games at TD Ameritrade I think it’s fairly important that you stay flat to the baseball so that you’re not elevating and lifting a lot of the baseballs but I still think you can still bash some baseballs out of there.”
An early showing for some BIG TEN Tournament action?
Creighton has Purdue, Maryland, and Nebraska coming into town for some three-game sets. Purdue and Maryland are both home-and-home series. Getting bigger named teams into town can only boost Creighton’s RPI but it also adds a bit of intrigue to see if Creighton can somehow set up a non-conference slate full of B1G teams looking to get some early looks at their conference tournament’s home.
Of the meeting between routinely good Maryland and the sometimes streaky Purdue, Servais said:
“It’s always fun to play different teams. Purdue had a great season in the Big Ten last year. Maryland – two years ago had a tremendous team – last year, a little hot and cold, but it’s just nice to play teams from those power conferences, it’s nice to get them here. Obviously the draw with our program and TD Ameritrade – it’s an easy sell to get teams like that – but of course it’s a home-and-home so next year we’re going to Purdue and Maryland but, I just like the fact that we’re playing different teams with different styles of how we play. It’s important for us to learn how to play against a bunch of different styles, and these are teams that have had a lot of success in recent years, and these are the kind of non-conference games we’re looking for.”