By Chris Parker
Diamond baseball has a new head coach in Ty Shaver this season. Shaver was at McDonald County as an assistant and junior high head coach for five seasons.
“I was attracted to Diamond because of the talent on the roster,” Shaver said. “There are several boys on the team that have played a lot of baseball and have a lot of talent and are young. I believed that would give us an opportunity to have success relatively quickly.”
Seven varsity starters and 10 lettermen return.
Grady Bentley (junior), Austin Girdner (senior), Adam Brown (junior), Dan Weiss (senior) and Gage Schubert (senior) will be the key pitchers.
Brown and Easton Bradley (sophomore) will be behind the plate at catcher.
Ethan Cauble (senior), Brailin Hicks (freshman), Giancarlo Martinez (sophomore), Kale Adams (sophomore) and Maddox Youngblood (sophomore) will be around the infield.
Girdner, Thomas Gow (senior), Colton Byers (sophomore), Adams and Youngblood will be around the outfield.
Bentley, Brown and Martinez were identified as team leaders by Shaver.
“Our team leaders this spring will be Grady Bentley, Adam Brown, and Giancarlo Martinez,” Shaver said. “These three are statistically our most productive returning players from last year and they set the tone for our practices and team.”
Brown hit .389 last season with three home runs. Martinez hit .358 with two home runs. Bentley was the top pitcher with a 3.13 ERA.
Girdner and Cauble have shown great improvement since Shaver’s arrival last summer.
“They (Girdner and Cauble) have both worked incredibly hard to try and have a great senior seasons,” Shaver said. “They have both put a ton of time in the cage to improve their swings and Ethan has been working really hard to improve his footwork around first base.”
Diamond will be strong running the bases, but strikeouts will need to decrease to provide more opportunities.
“I expect us to be strong defensively and good on the bases. We look to be athletic in the field and limit hits while using that athleticism on the bases to take extra bases,” Shaver said. “We need to cut down on strikeouts compared to last year. If we cut down on strikeouts and put more balls in play, that should help our OBP and allow us to be more dynamic offensively.”
Diamond opens the season at the Lamar Tiger Classic from Mar. 21-24.
“I expect us to be very competitive with everyone on our schedule this season. The team and I have been very open about our goal of competing for a conference and district championship,” Shaver said. “I am very excited to begin the season. I think this group of young men have tremendous potential and they have all been very excited to go out and prove themselves this spring and have a successful year.”
