It might only be the 12th of February, and there was snow on the ground in Columbus this morning, but the Buckeye Boys of Spring are hard at it getting ready for the 1999 season. Spring camp for the baseball Buckeyes began on the 25th of January, and the Bucks are hard at work to launch yet another successful season. The Buckeyes are 372-168-1 in the decade of the 90s. Their .689 winning percentage in that era ranks 12th nationally, and they are the only Big Ten team in the top 25.

As in every college sport, graduations thin out a team's roster. New blood has to come along to replace the veterans that have moved on. OSU had two huge losses to graduation this year in slugging first baseman Dan Seimetz (holder of the OSU single season home-run record at 19 in 1997 and the single season RBI total of 80, also in 1997) and slick fielding shortstop Mark Carek who paced the outstanding Buckeye defense in 1998. According to OSU head coach Bob Todd, that will be a task, but the show will go on.

"Guys like Dan Seimetz and Mark Carek, those two people are going to very difficult to replace because their quality of play was always so good. It's going to be difficult to find anybody with the kind of raw power that Seimetz showed," said Todd.

"The same way it is very difficult to put into words the intangible things that a Mark Carek brought to us, especially defensively. We led the nation in fielding percentage last year, and Mark Carek had a lot to do with that," he added.

As big as those two losses are, Todd remains optimistic about filling the holes on this year's edition of the the Buckeye baseball team. Todd has a history of keeping the pipeline full of talent at OSU, and just when you think graduation has left the cupboard bare, a new set of stars rise up.

"In 1991 we lost Mike Durant and Blase Sparma and Tim Smith and everybody was saying who are you going to find to replace them. Pretty soon we had a Matt Beaumont and a Scott Klingenbeck and a Jamie Taylor that stepped in there that did a great job for us. Those guys all played AA and AAA ball, they all came on and did a great job. People asked me then, whose going to take those guys places and pretty soon you've got a Dan Seimetz and a Mark Carek.," said Todd with a wry little smile.

Todd said it with the self assured smile of a guy who knows something, but he is still playing his cards a little close to the vest.

"Who are we going to replace them with? I'm not sure yet," said Todd. "Are we going to do it? Sure. We're going to play baseball and I bet you somebody steps to the front."

Todd says there are several viable candidates for the vacant shortstop position.

"Right now we're looking at either Trent McIlvain who got some playing time there last year and also played a lot at second base, we're trying to groom him to see if he can play there some. We're obviously going to try to get him in the lineup, especially defensively. And then Chad Ehrnsberger, who played third for us, is also in that mix. He was a shortstop out of high school and came to us as a natural shortstop and so he's also vying for that position. We've got good competition going on and eventually we'll settle on somebody. It might be the guy that makes the most routine play consistently," said the coach.

A winning baseball team has to be able to hit and field, but since the game has been played, the main ingredient to success is strong pitching. A team can survive an occasional error or a bad day at the plate if the pitching is strong, but you can lose a lot of 12-8 games if your pitching is weak, no matter how good your hitting attack and fielding is. The OSU pitching staff is very interesting this year. It was not hit particularly hard by graduation, but the Buckeyes did lose Eric Thompson to the professional ranks before his eligibility expired. Thompson, along with Judd Fry, were a great 1-2 punch on the mound for the Bucks. So will the Buckeyes be leaning heavily on the strong right arm of Judd Fry? The answer to that question might surprise you.

"The rotation really hasn't been established at all," said Bob Todd. "We tried to do some things and experiment a little in the fall. We feel like we have talented pitchers. One of the things that we tried to toy with a little bit, and he was very receptive to it but we don't know if it's best for the team, but we talked about maybe moving Judd Fry to a closer, and having him close the last two innings of a ball game, especially if we had the lead."

Could that really happen? Maybe, and maybe not, according to Todd.

"By the same token, Judd has been our Ace the last three years, and you hate to have him sit there and at the end of a weekend series he didn't pitch as many innings as he should have and your best pitcher didn't have a chance to do things to help his team win enough ball games."

A glance at the OSU pitching roster kind of tells the story. The Buckeyes have lots of young arms on the staff, arms that the fans haven't seen yet, but the coaching staff has seen in practice and in scouting.

What jumps out at you on that roster is the number of freshman and sophomore pitchers on the staff. On a staff of 13, there are 8 pitchers that are using either their freshman or sophomore year of eligibility. Are they any good? Good enough that Todd was at least contemplating moving his Ace, Justin Fry, to the bullpen as a closer. So what will the rotation look like, and who are the young guys that will compete for innings?

"Right now early we're going to throw Judd back in as a starter, and with being the case it looks like Judd Fry is going to go number one like he always has," said Todd.

"Andy Lee looks like he has stepped up to be number two, and then we've got a real good battle going on. Kevin Goodrum, who is a lefthander that is a sophomore now after gaining some valuable experience last year is competing well. Kurt Fullenkamp is still back who was one of our top starters last year and in our top four rotation. A kid named Nate Smith, a true freshman from Bryan Ohio, has come and has done very well for us. Greg Larric from Canton has a world of potential, and a kid that we redhirted last year, Ted Kalnins who is a Canadian is about 6-7, has a good arm and has good leverage," continued the coach.

"Those people right now are all fighting for those bottom two spots. The other person I'm leaving out that did an outstanding job for us in the fall and really showed a tremendous amount of potential is Brandon Steen. He's a kid out of Nashville, Tennessee that we recruited, and he's about 6-4 and 215 and I think that he also has a world of potential," he added.

It looks like a dog-fight for those last two starting jobs, with the winners getting the nod as starters, and the losers looking at the bullpen. Those that find themselves in the pen will be looking at an uphill battle for innings, because Todd already has a pitcher slated for the pen that he has penciled in as his middle man.

"Corey Cox is more of a guy that is going to be our middle relief," said Todd. "We've got a lot of confidence in him in throwing strikes and getting people out of jams, especially early in the game, and then get us to the last two innings and hopefully we've done some things offensively and scored enough runs to feel comfortable."

The Buckeyes will field a team with some youth this year on both the pitching staff and in the infield, but working in their favor this season is the schedule. Every year, the Big Ten schedule consists of 7 weekend series, which of course means that some years you play three series at home, and other your play four.

"We're fortunate this year that this is the year that we've got four Big Ten weekends at home," said Todd. So that means we've got 12 games at home in front of out crowd, playing in our facility which I think is always an advantage."

That is particularly true for young ball players, so this could be a very interesting season, to watch a young pitching staff develop and a new shortstop find his stride. The home schedule cannot hurt. Nor can the non-league schedule, which includes road games with schools like Kentucky, Miami, Minnesota (non-conference in the Troy State Classic in Montgomery Alabama), Houston, Harvard, Georgia, and East Carolina. The non-conference home schedule is extremely interesting since all those games will be played against in-state schools. Those are always very spirited affairs, and often very competitive. Ohio Wesleyan came to Columbus and beat the Bucks last year to claim the baseball championship of central Ohio. Look for those to be very entertaining games with all those in-state schools gunning to make their season by knocking off the Buckeyes.

"Some of the other mid-week games are with other Division 1 schools that are coming in here and obviously Ohio State is the state university, and everybody comes in here pumped up and ready to play," said Todd commenting on the home schedule.

Next week, the O-Zone will take a look at some of the veterans returning to the OSU baseball program this season.

1999 Baseball Schedule

1999 Baseball Roster by Position

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