York summer baseball team finding its identity
Dukes continue to develop pitchers for upcoming season.
By Mike Miazga
Correspondent
York baseball coach Dave Kalal has identified the team’s biggest question mark heading into next season.
“Offensively we’ve been pretty solid and defensively we’ve been pretty solid. We can run the bases well and be pretty aggressive,” he said of the team’s play during the summer regular-season schedule. “We have to find pitching. We have to find ways to pitch to contact and get guys out. We have a lot of arms that will compete for spots. We don’t have those one or two guys who can throw seven innings yet. For the summer playoffs we’re going to mix and match and we may do that next spring. It’s a trend we went to this spring a little bit. We had guys this spring with eight, nine, 10 and 13 appearances. We have to find guys who can throw and compete and get outs. Right now, pitching is a question mark. We have the arms, it’s just a matter of fine-tuning mechanics and making sure guys can throw three pitches for strikes in any count and any situation in a ballgame.”
York finished the summer regular season with an 8-8 mark. In recent games, York defeated Downers Grove South and dropped games to Benet Academy and Willowbrook.
“8-8 is fine for summer ball,” said Kalal.
Kalal, as he’s mentioned in the past, isn’t concerned about wins and losses and playoff seeds in the summertime.
“Summer is about getting guys to be more aggressive playing baseball and not worry about failure,” he said. “Just go out and play. This is what the summer is all about. You run kids out there and see what they can do. You see if they are coachable and you see if they listen and you see how hard they play the game.”
Kalal lauded summer efforts of Andrew Deardurff, Adam LaBarge, Ryan Ross, Ian Steinorth and Joey Jaeger. “They hit the ball pretty consistently and played good defense,” he said. “Some of these guys we brought up in the middle-to-late season this spring and they got experience. Guys such as Joey Jaeger, Ryan Ross, Ian and Joey Chiappetta were up with us and they got a taste of varsity baseball.”
York opened the state summer tournament as a No. 6 regional seed. The Dukes started the playoffs earlier this week against Glenbard East and if they won that game would have played either Maine West or Ridgewood in the second round.
“We’re in a pretty good regional with Willowbrook, Lyons Township, Lake Park. Glenbard West, Nazareth and Fenwick,” said Kalal. “We want to play well and win some games in the tournament.”
