Hail to the Seniors, All Teammates and Friends

In a fitting end to his career, Senior Tyler Bellstrom pitched us to victory in our last game of the season on Sunday. For us underclassmen, there’s always next year. But for the seniors, Sunday, which was also Senior Day, marked their last collegiate baseball game. And it is only right to dedicate the last blog entry of the season to the seniors, who were great teammates and friends.

Tyler finished his career on a high note. He was a work-horse and innings eater all year long. He led the team with three wins and 61.1 innings pitched. The co-captain threw three complete games this year, including back-to-back complete games against Skidmore and Rochester. And against St. Lawrence on March 11, he threw eight innings while allowing just two earned runs in the victory.

Senior pitcher Jeremy Pollack started the first game of our final doubleheader on Sunday. He led the team this year with 15 appearances, proving to be the go-to-guy out of the bullpen in the middle innings. A finesse pitcher, Jeremy allowed just 12 walks in 46.2 innings pitched and had the best strike out to walk ratio on the team.

Senior John Snyder was a leader in the dugout and will always be remembered as commissioner of “Two Ball,” a fun game we play during warm-ups. He made four appearances out of the bullpen and one start this year.

The only graduating position player, Co-captain Zack Miller had his best season as a Brewer this year. He hit .291 with an on-base percentage of .375. He was the team leader in home runs and was 12 for 12 stealing bases this year. He scored 20 runs and drove in 14 RBIs. And he concluded his career by going a combined 2-5 with three RBIs in the doubleheader on Senior Day.

We will all miss the seniors deeply. But we still feel that as a team we have a bright future ahead of us. We underachieved this year. We were a much more talented team than in years past, as shown by the fact that our team batting average went up 23 points from last season’s average. But we weren’t able to put our talent together to win this year.

Still, there were some individual bright spots on a very young team. Three freshmen: Liam Lee, Joe Coniglio and Sal Costanzo hit above .300 this year and freshman pitcher John MacGregor held the lowest ERA on the team. Junior Ari Glantz had another strong offensive year as well, hitting .336.

On a personal level, this year had its ups and downs. Baseball has a strange knack of working out exactly opposite of how you expect. Going into the year, I was extremely confident with my hitting and less so with my fielding, switching positions for the first time. However, as the year wore on, I hit some slumps on the offensive end while my fielding kept improving. Although I was hot at the plate for the first half of the season, I did not end up hitting as well as I would have liked. But I was very proud of the way I played the glove in my first year at a new position and ended up leading all infielders in the Liberty League in fielding percentage.

My goal going into the off-season last year was to work hard and earn a starting spot. And I accomplished that goal, starting every game this season. And for that, I am grateful. Yet, there is still so much more I want to accomplish as an individual, but more importantly, as a team. And I can’t wait till next year.