Friday Features: After successful season, Delta State baseball fears feeling the draft
By Maurice Patton
With 20 seasons as baseball coach at his alma mater, Delta State’s Mike Kinnison knows the college game involves two unavoidable factors:
Graduation, and the Major League Baseball Draft.
The two could take quite a toll on the Statesmen program, as it comes off a 42-17 performance that ended with a loss in the championship round of the NCAA Division II South Region Tournament.
“We’ve got 12 seniors on the squad – seven starting position players, a couple of guys out of the bullpen,” Kinnison said earlier this week, following Monday’s 3-1 loss to Nova Southeastern at the University of Tampa. “You could say nine of those 12 were frontline guys. We’re going to have some heavy losses, no question.”
As senior-heavy as Delta was this season, though, Kinnison is prepared – relatively speaking – to handle the fact those guys won’t be back. However, pitchers Tre Hobbs and Dalton Moats have generated some buzz over the course of the campaign that could see them picked off in the upcoming draft as well.
The junior lefties, both junior college transfers, combined to make 32 starts this spring, posting a cumulative record of 25-5. Moats finished with a 2.65 earned run average and 115 strikeouts in 112 innings, with Hobbs turning in a 3.18 ERA and 70 strikeouts in 102 innings.
Additionally, Jacob Howell had three saves in 17 relief appearances with a 3.93 ERA.
“They could all receive some attention through the draft,” Kinnison said. “We’ll monitor that and hopefully hang on to some of those guys.
“This was a year for us where our position players were experienced, older – quite a few seniors. Our pitching staff was challenged, had some new faces to it. We were trying to let our pitchers find themselves and let our position players carry us.”
The formula worked, for the most part, as Delta State finished the regular season as Gulf South Conference runner-up before winning the league postseason tournament. At the South Region, the Statesmen won a pair of games before falling into the losers bracket with a loss to Nova Southeastern. They battled back into the championship finals and defeated Nova 3-1 in Monday’s final before losing a second game by the same score.
“It’s been a good year,” Kinnison said. “I’m disappointed we couldn’t win one more, but I feel good that our guys continued to improve and got better as the season went along. They really gave us a good effort and played hard in the postseason."
“You feel like with the experience, any time you come up short you’re disappointed.”
And with the season over, the waiting game now begins with regards to which players will – or won’t – be back.
“The draft is both a blessing and a curse,” Kinnison said. “You feel great for those guys to have an opportunity. You’d love for them to be able to do what they’ve always wanted to do, which is play professionally. But it depletes your team unexpectedly and you can’t always plan for that."
“It really changes the face of a team quickly.”
Scheduled for June 9-11, the three-day draft process and the signing period that follows – drafted players and teams face an Aug. 15 deadline to reach agreement – leaves college coaches on pins and needles.
“You’d like to be able to see into the future and know, but you don’t always know,” Kinnison said. “Your scholarships are limited, so you can’t always bring those (caliber) players in late. Recruiting gets tough in summer months, because the pool of players gets reduced substantially."
“You build it in your recruiting plan to replace seniors. But when those underclassmen get taken, you don’t always have the capability to replace them after the draft.”
Follow Patton on Twitter at: @mopatton_sports. E-mail comments to: mopattonsports@gmail.com.
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