YSU’s baseball outlook brighter

By Pete Mollica

STRUTHERS — Youngstown State’s second-year baseball coach Rich Pasquale feels his team is already way ahead of last year in preparations for the season.

Pasquale, who guided the Penguins to a 23-33 overall record, including 13-12 in the Horizon League and 13-8 at home, based his prediction on a great fall season.

“First of all we had just outstanding weather and that enabled us to do everything we wanted to do and more and we were able to work a lot on defense, which is something we never got a chance to do a year ago,” Pasquale said.

“We were also able to start our individual work earlier,” he added. “Instead of giving them a week off after fall, we were able to go right into individual work and to do it outside was even that much greater.

“We spent a ton of time on defense and we are going to be a much better defensive team because of that,” he said.

Looking over his roster Pasquale pointed out what he considered the team’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Our strength is definitely going to be our offense; we are going to hit ball well,” he added. I’m excited about our offense.

“The one thing that could be a weakness would be that we might be a little short on pitching,” he said. “I say that meaning short on numbers because we do have some quality arms coming back and with the awesome job that assistant coach Tom Lipari is doing with our staff, we’re just going to get better.”

Pasquale will have plenty of new faces on the roster this year as only 15 of the 30 players appeared in a game last season. Fourteen of them are in their first season with the team.

Pasquale brought in five junior college transfers and he expects all of them to contribute immediately.

“You have to be strong up the middle and I think that we’ve improved tremendously there,” he added.

Junior transfer Jacke Healey from Tunkhannock, Pa., and Potomac State Junior College, is expected to be the everyday shortstop. Last year he batted .456 with 11 home runs and 15 doubles and earned NJCAA second-team All-America status.

“He’s a tremendous defensive player who can hit and he’s a very smart player,” Pasquale added. “We moved David Leon over to second base and he’s doing a great job there also.

“Then we’ve added junior transfer Eric Hymel in center field,” he said. “Eric’s from Madisonville, La., and Southwest Mississippi JC, who is very fast and a tremendous outfielder.”

Rounding out the middle of the defense will be junior catcher Anthony Porter of Boardman.

“Anthony has improved greatly defensively and he is an outstanding hitter,” Pasquale said.

Pasquale also has been impressed with transfer Greg Dissinger and freshman Jeremy Banks of Steubenville at the corners, while the other two outfield positions will be manned by the Penguins’ top returning hitter in sophomore Joe Iacobucci of Boardman, who hit .369 with three home runs a year ago, and junior Eric Marzac of Canton, who hit .304 with five home runs and 33 RBIs and also appeared in 12 games as a relief pitcher with a 2-1 record and a team-best 2.82 earned run average.

The pitching staff is led by Horizon League pitcher of the year Aaron Swenson, a junior, while junior Corey Vukovic from McDonald also returns.

“Coach Lipari has been working hard with the staff and the one thing he’s doing is getting them to throw more fastballs, to challenge the hitters at the plate.

“We’re going to open the season at Georgia, who made it to the finals of the College World Series last year,” he added. “Georgia was 23-33 in 2007 and won 45 games last year and when I asked their baseball director just what was the difference he said ‘We threw more fastballs last season.’ ”

The season opening series with the Bulldogs will be Feb. 20-22 in Athens, Ga.

mollica@vindy.com