Baseball preview: Despite graduation losses, Marquette again ready to reload

It seems after every season, the Marquette Academy baseball program loses a plethora of talented, successful players to graduation. Last spring was no exception.

With the likes of Times All-Area Team and All-Tri-County Conference choices Taylor Waldron, Aiden Thompson, Krew Bond, Logan Nelson and Tommy Durdan moving on from last year’s 28-3 conference champs, there are once again plenty of big shoes to fill.

But fill them, they do. Despite this annual depletion, coach Todd Hopkins’ program has gone an amazing 367-67 with six 30-win seasons and three state trophies in the last 13 campaigns.

So betting they won’t do it again may not be the best choice one could make.

“We lost a ton, there’s no way around it,” said Hopkins, who has a 25-season record of 619-181, a .774 winning percentage. “They were great players in our program and great kids, and a lot of them are doing well at the next level. That’s good to see, what you want to see.

“But we have some guys coming back that have been fortunate enough to have won three regionals, been a part of teams that went to state and all that, so they bring some experience and leadership that we’ll need. We’ll be leaning on those kids a lot.”

There’s experience at the infield corners with junior Sam Mitre and senior Carson Zellers at first and third, respectively. Up the middle will be sophomore shortstop Alec Novotney, a starter there for at least two-thirds of last season. The lone new starter should be sophomore Anthony Couch at second.

As all four also will see mound duty, freshman Griffin Dobberstein will fill in where needed when not on the bump himself.

Senior Charlie Mullen returns in right field, while junior Payton Gutierrez slides into center, and quality hitter Grant Dose lands in left. Junior Rush Keefer and freshman Easton DeBernardi also will see time in the outfield.

Junior Keaton Davis is the mainstay behind the plate, spelled when he moves to the hill by backup Jaxsen Higgins.

The biggest question will be on the mound, especially replacing Waldron and Thompson, who combined for a 14-2 record, 146 strikeouts and only 25 walks in 93 innings.

It falls to Zellers, Novotney, Couch, Dobberstein, Mitre, Mullen, Peterson and others to give the Cru one quality outing at a time and keep MA tough with the likes of Class 1A runner-up Henry-Senachwine, St. Bede, Seneca and Serena in the area.

“We’ll be OK on the mound,” Hopkins said. “We have four that are pretty good, at 82, 83 [mph]-plus, a few higher than that. On paper, we’re going to look young, and earlier in the year we may struggle with that, because they haven’t had a ton of innings, but they have played a lot of high-level travel baseball, so they won’t be in awe of anything.

“Overall as a team, it’s going to take awhile to figure out who we are, but hopefully by May we’ll have some momentum and be playing our best baseball heading into the tournament, because there are several teams in the area who are going to be tough.”

The sting of last year’s strange loss to Chicago Hope Academy in a sectional semifinal – on a catcher’s interference call with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 13th inning – might be something Hopkins and Co. would want to put behind them, but not so.

“I still can’t wrap my head around that, but that’s how it goes sometimes,” Hopkins said. “I think the guys who experienced that should keep that taste in their mouth, that long bus ride home, the feelings they had, and not let those things happen again.”