Mount Baseball in the Spring 2023 Season

Steve Morano
MSMU Class of 2024

(4/2023) On Saturday, May 21st, 2022, the Mount Saint Mary’s University baseball team lost their third and final game against Long Island University 13-7. The final game culminated in a series loss for the Mount and the end of a long and arduous season for the team and head coach Frank Leoni in his first year in charge of the team. A overall record of 14-34 and a conference record of 7-20 was a tough pill to swallow for many on the team, as they had finished the previous season 9-28. But throughout the rough spells for the team, a new conference and a new set of recruits shows amazing potential for the team as they look to grow and become a force to be reckoned with in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

The first key for Leoni and his assistants, Cullen Moore, Aaron Tarr and Cal Berman was of course, recruiting. A new conference necessitates new talent to match the preexisting players in the conference. But the coaching staff had an advantage in this field, as it was their first recruiting class as a coaching staff, so they did not have to adjust their recruiting tactics from one conference to another. They did this by brining in the likes of freshman Gavin Lacoe, Brayden Foster and the pitching duo of Jett Slepak and Jeff Davis. With the two pitchers being of key interest as of the writing of this article, they are both posting impressive ERAs out of the bullpen, with Slepak’s sitting at 1.50 through 12.1 innings pitched. Lacoe has also been very good at the plate with a batting average of .273 and a OPS of .697. There is certainly a lot of room to grow and a bright future for the young Mountaineers!

One of the major improvements that the Mount needs to show is that of their starting rotation. In 2022, their three main starters, Cooper Adams, Luke Pryor and Bryant Shives posted ERAs of 7.30, 7.90 and 9.73 respectively, capping off a team ERA of 8.31 compared to their opponents’ combined ERA of 5.50. So, going into this new season and new conference, they have to drop that down by a large margin to give their offense time to get runs. And so far, it is working. It is still very early in the season, but Adams in particular, who is the Friday night starter, is showing off what he has to offer in his final season, posting a 3.14 ERA through 28.2 innings.

With regards to their offensive output at the late, the Mount seems to be in better hands than they were last year. Out of the six players who have played in all eighteen games that the Mount has played in so far, five have batting averages above .270 and an OPS above .800. Players that standout specifically are junior Scott Seeker and senior Jayson Kramer, who are both batting .364 and .333 respectively. Seeker leads the team in OPS at 1.094 and Kramer is fourth in the team in OPS with .967. Seeker also leads the team in home runs with five, three of those coming on March 17th in a 12-5 win for the Mountaineers. On the basepaths, the Mount is very aggressive, swiping 24 bases in 31 attempts, with twelve of those belonging to junior, Aiden Tierney and senior Brady Drawbaugh. This hard-running philosophy between the bags has not changed from the team’s game plan from last season, as in 2022 the Mount stole 96 bases and had a 78% success rate in running between pitches. "It’s a complementary kind of style where we are looking to run when we can, but we are also we are trying to get the pitchers’ focus off the hitter a little bit and get some good pitches to hit," Leoni said.

MAAC baseball is completely different to the ball played in the Northeastern Conference. The new challenges that accompany a new conference have been a common theme for all sports at the Mount. Baseball is no different, as they faced the reigning conference champions, Canisius, regular season champions Fairfield, and MAAC powerhouse Marist in the first three weekends. On the importance of this first schedule in the conference, Leoni said, "We have all the things going against us, kind of like previous years, but will we really compete?" Ever since the players first walked through the doors, they have been mentally preparing for the competition. A hard combination of training and mental awareness for the new competition level have been accompanied by Leoni’s experience at the collegiate level. Leoni won the Atlantic-10 championship with Rhode Island in 2005. Leoni has utilized those experiences as well as testimonials from his Rhode Island teams of the mid-2000’s to help inspire his current players at the Mount to take on the test of their new competition.

The schedule that the Mountaineers face is filled with twists and turns of conference teams and national powerhouses. Already, the Mount has faced local schools such as Coppin State, Towson and UMBC. They also have played nationally-rated competition in a tournament against #4 Wake Forest, with these games being scheduled by the coaching staff to give experience to the team. Later this season, they will also face the likes of Georgetown, Virginia and Maryland. These out-of-conferences games are meant to challenge the pitching staff and offense in a attempt to ready the Mountaineers for the coming challenges of the MAAC. But what are the challenges that they will face in conference?

You obviously have the first three weekends, where they will face Canisius at home, Fairfield at home once again, and Marist at away. These games will be the telltale of if the team is up to the challenge of conference. Then on the weekend of April 14-16th, they take on St. Peters at home before they play Maryland Eastern Shore in a three-game set to take a break from conference play. They then pick it up again against Quinnipiac away in Connecticut on April 28th in Connecticut before going to New York to play Manhattan. The final home series is scheduled for May 11-13th, where the Mountaineers play Sienna before leaving for the U.S.-Canadian border to play Niagara in the final series before the conference playoffs, which start on May 24th.

No matter what happens in the first season of MAAC baseball for Mount Saint Mary’s, you can be sure of this: the future, if not the near future, is extremely bright and promising. With the influx of good, young pitching and the experience that the veterans of this team have, they have the potential to be really good. They just have to keep the "nothing to lose" mindset that the coaching staff have drummed into them since the beginning of the year. If they do that, then they will be playing competitive baseball in a conference that is known for it.