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closeUNIVERSITY PARK — Last year is behind the State College Spikes.
CDT/Christopher Weddle
Spikes player Matt Payne talks with a television station during the team's media day at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park on Thursday, June 18, 2009. CDT/Christopher Weddle
Or is it really? Because 11 players wearing Spikes uniforms provide a baseball player’s glow — one that’s hidden to prevent giddiness, but exists internally — when somebody mentions 2008.
The quickest way to put a 18-56 in the trash runs through the bodies, minds, and perhaps most importantly, the arms of current Spikes making the jump from Bradenton of the Gulf Coast League.
While the Spikes needed a late surge to eliminate themselves from becoming the worst team in New York-Penn League history, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ rookie- level affiliate played into the postseason.
Until more draft picks sign and arrive, the 2009 Spikes, who begin this season at 7:05 p.m. tonight against Williamsport at Medlar Field at Lubrano
Park, partially resemble the 2008 Bradenton Pirates.
Some of the main contributors from last year’s 37-18 Bradenton team said during Thursday’s Media Day that what worked in Bradenton can produce desirable results here.
“I think if we take the same work ethic we had in Bradenton and bring it up here, we have a chance to have some of the same success,” Opening Day starting pitcher Tyler Cox said.
Verbal reviews of the 2008 Bradenton Pirates are positive.
The team quickly adapted to the Pirates’ player development philosophies and manager Tom Prince’s demanding style to win the GCL’s Southern Division. The club flourished without a slew of high draft picks or highly-ranked prospects.
Catcher Benji Gonzalez, a 2008 seventh-round draft pick from Puerto Rico, was the only player selected in the first 10 rounds of a Major League Baseball Draft to make significant contributions to Bradenton’s success. Infielder Jarek Cunningham, who will miss this season with a knee injury, was the only Bradenton player considered among the GCL’s Top 20 prospects by Baseball America.
Those details never mattered. The pitching staff grasped organizational philosophies to record a league-low 2.87 ERA. The offense only hit 20 homers, but stole 104 bases and batted .265, a respectable number for a team in a league filled with teenagers swinging wood bats for the first time.
The team also went 22-10 in games decided by three or fewer runs.
“We did all the right things,” pitcher Brandon Holden said. “Nothing we had last year was very special. All of us played together well and played as a team.”
The Pirates have assigned six pitchers from last year’s Bradenton to State College. The group includes Nelson Pereira and Cox, a pair of left-handers, who finished first and second in ERA among GCL pitchers who worked 0.8 innings per team game.
Albert Fagan (2.88), Zach Foster (3.99), Holden (3.90) and Ricardo Paulino (3.30) also posted respectable ERAs. The experienced sextet — Pereira and Holden are the only members of the group under 22 — should help the Spikes improve upon last year’s NY-PLworst 5.40 team ERA.
“We had a lot of confidence in our pitchers,” Fagan said. “Basically, we only had to come up with a couple of runs and we knew we were going to get that from our hitters.”
The Spikes received five position players from Bradenton, including 23-year-old catcher Craig Parry and 22-year-old infielders Freicer Pedron and Carlos Silva. Outfielders Edward Garcia, who turns 22 in August, and Kyle Saukko, 20, also played in Bradenton last summer.
“The biggest thing is that the players from the Gulf Coast League that are here spent a summer in a winning environment and they have an attention to discipline and detail,” said Pirates director of player development Kyle Stark, who constructed the Spikes’ roster.
Winning at State College could prove tougher.
GCL teams often receive young, raw players from their parent clubs, and athletes who signed out of high school or Latin America fill rosters. Parent clubs load NY-PL rosters with former college standouts. Other factors such as playing under the lights before large crowds add to the NY-PL’s difficulty.
Stark said the short-season league can be as challenging as the full-season South Atlantic League.
“On any given night you can argue the New York- Penn League is better,” Stark said. “Maybe not consistently every night, but in the South Atlantic League in the second half a lot of the better prospects have gone up. In the New York-Penn League, there’s a lot of college players and teams like Brooklyn and some others that are going to approach things a little different than other clubs.”
The Pirates’ recent GCL records have produced mixed NY-PL results the following season. The Spikes struggled last year after receiving players from a Bradenton team that went 26-30 in 2007. The Pirates last GCL division title before last year came in 2003. The organization’s NY-PL affiliate in Williamsport went 34-40 the following season.
The Pirates followed a solid GCL season with a successful NY-PL run in 2003, when the Crosscutters won the outright title. The team included players from a 2002 Bradenton squad that went 37-23. But the ‘03 Crosscutters also featured first-and second-round draft picks and eventual major-leaguers Paul Maholm and Tom Gorzelanny in their starting rotation. The current Spikes ended minicamp Thursday without a player selected in the first 10 rounds of the past three drafts.
Cox said nobody has set explicit team goals for this season. But he has noticed an attitude similar to the one displayed in Bradenton last year.
“I see a lot of guys that look like they want to win and act like they want to win around the clubhouse,” Cox said. “Nobody is talking like we want to do this or we want to do that because we are taking it one step a time. The first step to everything is hard work.”
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