I attended the Bay Area college baseball media conference at Stanford today, and here are some quotes from coach Piraro, Max Peterson and Kyle Bellows that didn’t make it into our print edition baseball preview story.
Coach Piraro emphasized, “Our greatest strength is our experience. I do believe in experience.”
Piraro said last year SJSU started four or five freshman in 43 of the 56 games and they gained a lot of experience in that process, even winning a good amount of them.
“This is an underrated team,” Piraro repeatedly said. “I don’t know how we’re going to do with wins and losses but this team can put it together, they’re capable, they’re going to win a lot of games.”
Piraro moved Bellows to shortstop.
“He played the entire fall at third base,” the winningest SJSU baseball coach of all-time added. “We felt we needed to move our best player at that position. The reason I put him at third in the past was to protect him from the contact and the things that go around the bag at second base.”
“He’s just too valuable not to play at shortstop,” Piraro added.
Piraro addressed several other players and their positions.
“Corey Maleen will start at third base. Once again, he’s a three-year starter for us. ”
“Centerfield, Jason Martin, he started just about every game at center for us last year. He’s an outstanding player, very underrated player.”
“Herbert Craig will DH right now.”
“The bullpen there’s a little bit of a question because not because we don’t have quality arms, we have really good arms down there. Anthony Bega, who closed out several games for us last year, Jack Adams and Trevor Gibson all have the ability to close games.”
“We’re going to have to hit. I don’t sleep at night when I think about that. If we can do that, then watch out.”
Some of Piraro’s comments on Peterson:
“Anytime he takes the mound, we think we have an excellent chance of winning.”
“Our team has great confidence in him, he’s durable.”
“I’m expecting Max to be a main guy in our rotation this year.”
“If someone’s going to pick you second, that means you have some really good players.”
“I believe the strength of any team is your returning players. Our new players, I’m going to ease them in.”
Here are some of Peterson’s comments, who agreed with Piraro that the Spartans are underrated this season:
“Our biggest asset is experience.
“We’re hoping to compete with (Fresno State) and win a championship.”
“I think we can surprise a lot of teams outside the WAC with being able to compete with them.”
Added Piraro: “Fresno is very, very good but they did lose some pitching.”
A few of Bellows’ comments:
“Everybody in our conference is good. It doesn’t matter who you play, you can’t take anyone lightly.”
“A lot of experience should equal wins.”
“I really feel we’re underrated but we still have to go out there and prove it.”
“Hopefully I can bring RBIs, that’s what we need.”
