Mitchell hopes large staff helps build pitching prowess for Post 18 baseball
Jun. 13—MITCHELL — There are a lot of skilled players on the Mitchell Post 18 American Legion baseball team this summer.
And almost all of them will likely be on the mound at some point this season.
A deep, skilled pitching staff has already shown itself to be a strength for the Post 18 ball club, which has started 8-4 on the season with solid pitching leading the way. In 12 games played, 13 Mitchell different pitchers have recorded at least an out, and Mitchell only has 15 players on its roster.
A big pitching staff is important for Legion baseball, as Post 18 will take on 16 more games before the end of the month, with the number of games expected to surpass 40 by the start of the postseason.
"Almost everyone on the team has been throwing bullpen sessions," Mitchell coach Luke Norden said. "You have to get guys throwing and you have to get through the season. There's times where you need to get the game finished out, so it's good to have a lot of options. ... The more guys you have, the better off you're going to be but it's important for everyone to be able to deliver on innings where we're able to get in and out of being on the field on defense."
With the return of postgraduate Landon Waddell, who is eligible for one final season of Legion play after his freshman season at Dakota Wesleyan, Post 18 has three of its top five pitchers from 2022 back on the team in terms of innings pitched. Waddell threw 48 innings last season with a 2.62 ERA, with 33 1/3 innings from Dylan Soulek and 26 innings from Peyton Schroder, with those three players already atop Mitchell's innings pitched list early in the season.
But it's also a mix of new faces, with eight pitchers that did not pitch during the 2022 Legion season. Seven of the top-eight Junior Legion pitchers from last season in innings pitched have moved up to the Senior Legion squad this year, including Tyler Sanderson, who has a 1.20 ERA in his first 11 2/3 innings on the mound.
Mitchell started the summer season with strong pitching and defense, with an ERA of 1.72 from the team in the first 65 innings of the season, starting Mitchell out at 8-2 in the first 10 games. Even with a doubleheader sweep at the hands of Aberdeen on Sunday, Mitchell has a strikeout-to-walk ratio that's nearly 2-to-1, with 65 punchouts and 32 bases on balls.
In Rapid City at the Veterans Classic, where Mitchell finished 4-1, Post 18 allowed seven runs and 18 hits in a total of five games.
"When we went out to Rapid, we gave up very few runs because we were pounding the strike zone and we were making guys put balls in play and forcing them into situations where it's, 'Go ahead and hit it,'" Norden said. "We want to be putting the pressure on the offense."
Norden said the key for the pitching staff is to throw strikes early in the count and avoid situations where hitters have an obvious advantage in the count. Mitchell has thrown 62.3% of its pitches overall for a strike, including 61% on the first pitch. More than half of the batters faced have been either retired or reached their offensive outcome in the first three pitches, and as a staff, Mitchell has had 56 innings of its 79 so far on the mound that have not involved a walk.
"The last couple of games, we haven't thrown enough strikes early on and we've gotten away with what was successful for us," Norden said. "We don't want to be too fine with the pitching. We can't be trying to strike guys out with no strikes."
