The Sinclair Community College men\u2019s baseball team is doing some things well and struggling in other areas, according to coach Steve Dintaman.<\/p>\n
Among the things going well are Marcus Heath, who as of April 11 is hitting .422 with a .822 slugging percentage.\u00a0 His six home runs are triple the second highest count on the team.\u00a0 Heath hits third for the Tartan Pride, and Dintaman said his leadoff hitter, Steve Buglione, has gotten on-base in every game he\u2019s played in, allowing Heath and the rest of the offense opportunities to produce runs.<\/p>\n
Buglione is getting on-base at a 45 percent clip, second on the team to Heath.\u00a0 Brandon Branigan, Brandon Napier, Cale Marker, Kyle Vander Ark and Chas Harper all also have on-base percentages above .380.<\/p>\n
Dintaman said that power throughout the league has been reduced to do a change in the bat used.\u00a0 The new bats, called BBCOR (Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution), are dragging down slugging throughout the NJCAA, according to Dintaman.\u00a0 He said virtually every coach he talks to complains about the bats.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe BBCOR bats are changing the game,\u201d Dintaman said.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve also put a bigger emphasis on speed and defense, the coach said.\u00a0 The Tartan Pride have been \u201cup and down\u201d defensively so far, with 47 total errors.<\/p>\n
Dintaman said the strength of the team is still its \u2018weekend rotation,\u2019 led by Jeremiah Kerns, Christian McElroy, Austin Pressly and Alex Kimsey.\u00a0 Dintaman explained that conference games are generally on the weekend, and the conference games matter more for playoff positioning.\u00a0 Because of that, Dintaman uses his best starting pitchers on those days.<\/p>\n
Kerns has thrown 36 innings, struck out 34 batters and has a 3.50 ERA.\u00a0 McElroy has struck out 40 batters in only 30 innings, Pressly has allowed only 23 hits in 30 innings and Kimsey led the Tartan Pride to their only victory against the defending national champions, LSU-Eunice.\u00a0 Dintaman said that Kimsey has locked himself into the fourth starter spot and is showing a lot of confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can win every game with our staff,\u201d Dintaman said.\u00a0 \u201cWe have the best staff, top to bottom, in the conference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Sinclair Community College men\u2019s baseball team is doing some things well and struggling in other areas, according to coach Steve Dintaman. Among the things going well are Marcus Heath, who as of April 11 is hitting .422 with a .822 slugging percentage.\u00a0 His six home runs are triple the second highest count on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1Eo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6348"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6350,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348\/revisions\/6350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}