Baseball begins 2013 season

Following the disappointment of missing the NCAA Tourna­ment last year the baseball team will look to return to the tourna­ment for the second time in three seasons, something the Pirates have not done since they made back-to-back trips in 2000 and 2001.

Coming off a 34-24 season that saw his team finish one game out of first place in the conference with a 17-10 Big East record, head coach Rob Sheppard is still stressing the basics to his team.

"Continuing to play hard," Sheppard said. "Be committed to each other and just playing good fundamental baseball."

Much of the Pirates roster re­turns as only five players were lost to graduation and Ryan Har­vey left after being drafted by the Texas Rangers. Despite the losses, much of the infield is back along with two-thirds of the start­ing rotation, including Friday starter Jon Prosinski.

"Pretty much the whole infield has some experience," Prosinski said. "Three of the starters are back and (sophomore) Sal (An­nunziata) got a bunch of time at first and was our DH last year. All of our catchers have experience and we lost an outfielder but all those outfielders we have right now have experience. We have a lot of experience and depth on the team."

With all of these returning players on a team that finished third in the conference last sea­son, one might think that the Pirates would receive a high ranking in the Big East coaches' preseason poll but the Hall was picked sixth, right in the middle of the conference.

"I kind of like it we like the dark horse role," senior Mike Genovese said. "Nobody ever ex­pects us to be that great because we are not up there with all those big teams but we can beat any­body on any day."

That proved to be true last season as the Pirates won their weekend series on the road against Louisville and St. John's who finished first and second in the conference.

Although the team did not re­ceive a high ranking, Prosinski was selected by the coaches as the Big East Preseason Pitcher of the Year while being one of two players selected unanimously to the preseason All-Big East team, along with Notre Dame junior Trey Mancini.

"He deserves it," Sheppard said. "He pitched well enough to earn first team at the end of last season and it just shows a lot of people respect what he does on the mound. He works he tail off and does a fine job and deserves all the accolades he gets."

While honored to receive these preseason awards, Prosin­ski does not feel as if these are the ones that matter.

"To know the coaches in the conference have that kind of re­spect for me, it's a great honor," Prosinski said. "But even as my teammates have congratulated me on that stuff, I make sure to tell them it's not about now and it doesn't mean anything and I have to make sure I deserve those awards at the end of the season."

Last season, Prosinski led the Pirates with a 9-3 record and two complete game shutouts.

The 34 wins last season matched their win total from the previous year but the Hall lost two midweek games to a 20-34 Saint Peter's team and another one to 20-19 Princeton, which hurt the team's chances at earn­ing an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

"Sometimes it's just a lack of focus in those mid-week games," Prosinski said. "Playing our first month before Big East play and all those mid-week games, that's what's really going to get us that at-large bid. As long as we have success in the conference again we just need more wins to back that up."

For the position players this is much harder to do especially coming off an important weekend series in conference.

"It's definitely hard, as a posi­tion player it's a grind playing 3 big games over the weekend and then playing a team you know you are better than," Genovese said. "I guess you play down to their level. You can't take any team lightly and have to play at your own level. We have to win those games this year."

The season starts this week­end with the Pirates traveling to Chapel Hill, N.C. to face the No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels ac­cording to Baseball America.

"This senior class, the team we have returning, we have to take it weekend at a time," Shep­pard said. "I really believe that this is a special group of young men, they accomplished a lot in the last couple of years and we expect to continue to do that this season and forward."

Stephen Valenti can be reached at stephen.valenti@stu­dent.shu.edu. He can be found on Twitter @StevvieV.