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Sanchez at catcher next year?
Posted on: June 14, 2017 at 10:14:59 CT
Mizzou Tom KC
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Good interview with Toppmeyer. I found it interesting that EE said he didn't watch the WCWS this year.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/sports/20170613/whos-behind-plate-in-2018-earleywine-discusses-that-and-much-more
By Blake Toppmeyer
For much of the past four seasons, Missouri softball coach Ehren Earleywine hasn’t had to put much thought into whose name to write down at catcher on the lineup card.
Kirsten Mack started 200 games for the Tigers from 2014-17, with 189 of those starts coming behind the dish. She shared the job during her freshman season before starting 50 or more games at catcher in each of the next three seasons.
Missouri’s incoming signing class includes two catchers – Trenity Edwards and Hatti Moore – but Earleywine also is considering a wild-card contender: Amanda Sanchez.
Sanchez was Missouri’s starting third baseman in 2015 and 2016, and she would’ve remained in that role this spring, but her season was cut short in March due to an elbow injury. Sanchez hasn’t played catcher in a Missouri uniform, but Earleywine has been known to try creative options when filling out the lineup card, and he isn’t ruling out using her.
Sanchez sought a medical hardship waiver after her 2017 season was limited to 13 games due to an ulnar collateral ligament sprain in her left elbow. Sanchez bats lefty and throws righty. She’ll have two seasons of eligibility remaining.
“We are going to try Amanda Sanchez behind the plate,” Earleywine said in a wide-ranging interview with the Tribune on Thursday. She throws “72 overhand, obviously really good hands, a lot of game savvy, left-handed hitter, not very fast.
“All the tools kind of line themselves up for her to be a good catcher, but it’s been a long time since she’s done it, and if we get her back there in the fall and it looks like it’s going to be a six- or eight-month project, we’re going to abandon it pretty quick. But if we watch her and say, ‘Whoa, she’s already pretty good. I think we can do this,’ then we’re going to see how it goes.”
Earleywine also has confidence in the incoming freshmen.
“Both of those kids are really good defensive catchers, and Trenity is a big-time power hitter, as well,” he said. “If Amanda doesn’t really take to this catching thing, then we just put her back at third or first.”
This isn’t the first time Earleywine has gone into an offseason thinking about shifting Sanchez, a career .346 hitter with 23 home runs to her name.
After Sanchez’s freshman season, Earleywine planned to move her across the diamond to first base, but Sanchez dropped weight intent on keeping the job at the hot corner, and Earleywine ultimately kept her at third.
Here are some other nuggets from last week’s conversation with Earleywine ...
A DISAPPOINTING FINISH: Although the Tigers made the NCAA Tournament for the 11th straight season, they went 0-2 in the Eugene, Ore., regional, falling 7-2 to Wisconsin and 5-4 to Illinois-Chicago. It marked the first time in Earleywine’s 11-year tenure that his Tigers didn’t win a postseason game. In fact, Missouri won at least two regional games in each of Earleywine’s first 10 seasons at the helm.
Missouri’s 29-28 record also was its worst mark under Earleywine.
“Definitely a disappointment,” Earleywine said. ... “Over the last 10 or 11 years, our standards have been set higher than that. Anything lower than that is a disappointment in a lot of ways. It doesn’t mean everything was a disappointment, but, just overall, we’re frustrated and disappointed and feverishly ready to get started for next year.”
WHERE’S THE FIRE?: Earleywine questioned his team’s desire in the postseason.
“When we got to the regional, there were a handful of kids on our team that, I don’t want to say they didn’t care, but that passion and that drive wasn’t the same,” he said. “I think they were kind of, in some ways, glad that the season was near its end.”
WHO’S ON THIRD?: Let’s say Earleywine’s experiment with Sanchez works. What does that mean for third base? That position that was in constant flux throughout 2017 -- and marked by shoddy defense -- with Sanchez spending most of the season in the dugout.
“We have about five kids out of this incoming class that were shortstops in high school, so if Amanda moved to catcher, you put one of those shortstops at third,” Earleywine said, “and then we also have three or four more of those kids who are going to be fighting for second base on our infield and first base. You could potentially have four shortstops on our infield, and that’s with Sanchez catching next year, and that’s just a result of that really big, potent class that we have coming in.”
LOADED CLASS: Flosoftball.com ranked Missouri’s 11-member signing class as the ninth-best in the nation.
Does that make it Earleywine’s best recruiting class? He’s still partial – for now – to the class that entered the program in 2009.
That class included Chelsea Thomas, the best pitcher in history; Ashley Fleming, one of the best hitters in program history; and Kristin Nottelmann, who also was a successful pitcher throughout her career. Thomas, Fleming and Nottelmann helped Missouri make three straight Women’s College World Series appearances from 2009-11.
“I think it would be hard to debate or argue that it’s going to be long-term more effective than Chelsea Thomas and her class was and the impact they had on our program,” Earleywine said. “But, yeah, when you bring in 11 kids and” several “of them are ranked in the top 100, just the sheer numbers alone are going to sway this class to be one of the best ever.”
IN COMES RICE: The recruiting class is headlined by pitcher Lauren Rice, a hard-throwing right-hander from Morrison, Ill., who committed to Missouri at 14 years old before ever throwing a pitch for her high school program.
Cheyenne Baxter, Missouri’s top pitcher from 2017, graduated, and another pitcher, Parker Conrad, is transferring. That leaves juniors Madi Norman and Danielle Baumgartner as the pitchers returning, but Rice will be expected to become the top arm.
However, help might be on the way.
“A lot of weight is going to be applied to how” Rice “comes in and pitches, but, recently, there have been some really good pitching transfers on the market that we are hosting for a couple of visits, and that could take some of the pressure off of her,” Earleywine said Thursday. ... “If we could get one of the two or two of the two that we’re going after, that could make an enormous difference in our season. That wouldn’t reduce our expectations for Lauren. It would just make the job easier for her, I think.”
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: Baumgartner found success as a freshman in 2016 thanks to a filthy changeup and an ability to consistently locate her pitches. Those tools allowed her to get by despite not having elite velocity. She went 14-4 with a 1.98 ERA that season.
Baumgartner took a step back as a sophomore, posting a 5-5 record and 3.84 ERA.
“I think some of it was kind of my fault,” Earleywine said.
Earleywine said that late in Baumgartner’s freshman season, he noticed that the book was out on Baumgartner. Opponents knew she didn’t throw hard, so they were waiting back and refusing to commit to a pitch too quickly. In that way, they were honoring her changeup, knowing they could still catch up to Baumgartner’s hard stuff.
So Earleywine’s strategy this year was to have Baumgartner pound batters with hard stuff on the hands and mix in the changeup when they started timing her hard stuff. His theory: Even if Baumgartner only throws 62 mph, batters wouldn’t be able to turn on 62 on the hands if they were waiting for a changeup.
The plan backfired, Earleywine said.
“I think what happened during the process, Danielle was more concerned about throwing hard so she could jam people, and in doing so, she lost some of the tilt, especially in her dropball,” Earleywine said. “It became just a flat pitch that was jamming people, and the changeup was doing what it was doing, but she had lost her movement.”
Earleywine wants to tweak the approach for Baumgartner’s junior season. He still wants the game plan to be a mix of hard stuff on the hands and changeups, but he wants her to focus on movement rather than velocity.
If Baumgartner can get in on batters’ hands with her movement of old and sprinkle in her changeup, which is her best pitch, Earleywine thinks she’ll get back on track.
FAITH IN LALONDE: Earleywine tapped Adam LaLonde as his pitching coach last fall following the departures of associate coach Pete D’Amour and volunteer assistant Doug Gillis. D’Amour had long had a hand in handling the staff and called pitches, and Gillis is “the mechanical guru in the entire nation,” Earleywine said.
D’Amour, who also was an ace recruiter, was hired in September to be the head coach at Kennesaw State, and he made Gillis his pitching coach.
Missouri’s ERA of 3.33 in 2017 ranked last in the SEC, but regardless of who the pitching coach was, it was going to be a tough road to hoe following last summer’s transfers of ace Paige Lowary and veteran arm Tori Finucane. Arm injuries to Conrad, who was projected to be the team’s ace, didn’t help.
Earleywine remains confident that LaLonde is the right person to steward the pitching staff.
“I’ve been around the game my whole life, and I know when somebody’s full of **** and when they’re not,” Earleywine said. “And he’s just not. He knows his stuff.”
Earleywine pointed to Baxter’s success as proof of what LaLonde can do. Baxter had a career year, going 16-10 with a 2.47 ERA.
“I don’t think anybody could’ve done what he did with Cheyenne Baxter this year,” Earleywine said. “Who would’ve thought she’d have a season like that? She was coached by Doug and Pete for three years, and she never got close to having numbers like she had this year.
“And then Madi Norman came in, the transfer from Louisville, and had hardly pitched at all there, and when she pitched, she wasn’t very effective. She came in with no riseball. She was all drop. Although she didn’t have a great year, I don’t think anybody would’ve said, ‘Madi Norman is going to beat Washington.’ ”
QUIET ON THE CONTRACT FRONT: Earleywine had no update on contract extension talks. His contract is set to expire after the 2018 season.
“I just have to make the right moves and get us back to our winning ways, and I think everything will take care of itself,” he said. “I think the new administration, I think we have the right people in place, and I think their expectations are right. I’m on board. I want to be here. Everybody knows that, but just to reiterate, this is where I want to be.”
ON LOWARY: Lowary, who won 43 games in two seasons for Missouri before transferring to Oklahoma, helped the Sooners win the Women’s College World Series.
In Oklahoma’s championship series against Florida, Lowary allowed two earned runs in 10 2/3 innings and collected the win in Game 1, which lasted 17 innings. In Game 2 against the Gators, she tossed a perfect two innings to collect the save.
“Good for her that she went on and did what she did, and we just have to focus on Mizzou and getting us back to where we have to get,” said Earleywine, who said he didn’t tune in to the WCWS.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/sports/20170613/whos-behind-plate-in-2018-earleywine-discusses-that-and-much-more
By Blake Toppmeyer
For much of the past four seasons, Missouri softball coach Ehren Earleywine hasn’t had to put much thought into whose name to write down at catcher on the lineup card.
Kirsten Mack started 200 games for the Tigers from 2014-17, with 189 of those starts coming behind the dish. She shared the job during her freshman season before starting 50 or more games at catcher in each of the next three seasons.
Missouri’s incoming signing class includes two catchers – Trenity Edwards and Hatti Moore – but Earleywine also is considering a wild-card contender: Amanda Sanchez.
Sanchez was Missouri’s starting third baseman in 2015 and 2016, and she would’ve remained in that role this spring, but her season was cut short in March due to an elbow injury. Sanchez hasn’t played catcher in a Missouri uniform, but Earleywine has been known to try creative options when filling out the lineup card, and he isn’t ruling out using her.
Sanchez sought a medical hardship waiver after her 2017 season was limited to 13 games due to an ulnar collateral ligament sprain in her left elbow. Sanchez bats lefty and throws righty. She’ll have two seasons of eligibility remaining.
“We are going to try Amanda Sanchez behind the plate,” Earleywine said in a wide-ranging interview with the Tribune on Thursday. She throws “72 overhand, obviously really good hands, a lot of game savvy, left-handed hitter, not very fast.
“All the tools kind of line themselves up for her to be a good catcher, but it’s been a long time since she’s done it, and if we get her back there in the fall and it looks like it’s going to be a six- or eight-month project, we’re going to abandon it pretty quick. But if we watch her and say, ‘Whoa, she’s already pretty good. I think we can do this,’ then we’re going to see how it goes.”
Earleywine also has confidence in the incoming freshmen.
“Both of those kids are really good defensive catchers, and Trenity is a big-time power hitter, as well,” he said. “If Amanda doesn’t really take to this catching thing, then we just put her back at third or first.”
This isn’t the first time Earleywine has gone into an offseason thinking about shifting Sanchez, a career .346 hitter with 23 home runs to her name.
After Sanchez’s freshman season, Earleywine planned to move her across the diamond to first base, but Sanchez dropped weight intent on keeping the job at the hot corner, and Earleywine ultimately kept her at third.
Here are some other nuggets from last week’s conversation with Earleywine ...
A DISAPPOINTING FINISH: Although the Tigers made the NCAA Tournament for the 11th straight season, they went 0-2 in the Eugene, Ore., regional, falling 7-2 to Wisconsin and 5-4 to Illinois-Chicago. It marked the first time in Earleywine’s 11-year tenure that his Tigers didn’t win a postseason game. In fact, Missouri won at least two regional games in each of Earleywine’s first 10 seasons at the helm.
Missouri’s 29-28 record also was its worst mark under Earleywine.
“Definitely a disappointment,” Earleywine said. ... “Over the last 10 or 11 years, our standards have been set higher than that. Anything lower than that is a disappointment in a lot of ways. It doesn’t mean everything was a disappointment, but, just overall, we’re frustrated and disappointed and feverishly ready to get started for next year.”
WHERE’S THE FIRE?: Earleywine questioned his team’s desire in the postseason.
“When we got to the regional, there were a handful of kids on our team that, I don’t want to say they didn’t care, but that passion and that drive wasn’t the same,” he said. “I think they were kind of, in some ways, glad that the season was near its end.”
WHO’S ON THIRD?: Let’s say Earleywine’s experiment with Sanchez works. What does that mean for third base? That position that was in constant flux throughout 2017 -- and marked by shoddy defense -- with Sanchez spending most of the season in the dugout.
“We have about five kids out of this incoming class that were shortstops in high school, so if Amanda moved to catcher, you put one of those shortstops at third,” Earleywine said, “and then we also have three or four more of those kids who are going to be fighting for second base on our infield and first base. You could potentially have four shortstops on our infield, and that’s with Sanchez catching next year, and that’s just a result of that really big, potent class that we have coming in.”
LOADED CLASS: Flosoftball.com ranked Missouri’s 11-member signing class as the ninth-best in the nation.
Does that make it Earleywine’s best recruiting class? He’s still partial – for now – to the class that entered the program in 2009.
That class included Chelsea Thomas, the best pitcher in history; Ashley Fleming, one of the best hitters in program history; and Kristin Nottelmann, who also was a successful pitcher throughout her career. Thomas, Fleming and Nottelmann helped Missouri make three straight Women’s College World Series appearances from 2009-11.
“I think it would be hard to debate or argue that it’s going to be long-term more effective than Chelsea Thomas and her class was and the impact they had on our program,” Earleywine said. “But, yeah, when you bring in 11 kids and” several “of them are ranked in the top 100, just the sheer numbers alone are going to sway this class to be one of the best ever.”
IN COMES RICE: The recruiting class is headlined by pitcher Lauren Rice, a hard-throwing right-hander from Morrison, Ill., who committed to Missouri at 14 years old before ever throwing a pitch for her high school program.
Cheyenne Baxter, Missouri’s top pitcher from 2017, graduated, and another pitcher, Parker Conrad, is transferring. That leaves juniors Madi Norman and Danielle Baumgartner as the pitchers returning, but Rice will be expected to become the top arm.
However, help might be on the way.
“A lot of weight is going to be applied to how” Rice “comes in and pitches, but, recently, there have been some really good pitching transfers on the market that we are hosting for a couple of visits, and that could take some of the pressure off of her,” Earleywine said Thursday. ... “If we could get one of the two or two of the two that we’re going after, that could make an enormous difference in our season. That wouldn’t reduce our expectations for Lauren. It would just make the job easier for her, I think.”
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: Baumgartner found success as a freshman in 2016 thanks to a filthy changeup and an ability to consistently locate her pitches. Those tools allowed her to get by despite not having elite velocity. She went 14-4 with a 1.98 ERA that season.
Baumgartner took a step back as a sophomore, posting a 5-5 record and 3.84 ERA.
“I think some of it was kind of my fault,” Earleywine said.
Earleywine said that late in Baumgartner’s freshman season, he noticed that the book was out on Baumgartner. Opponents knew she didn’t throw hard, so they were waiting back and refusing to commit to a pitch too quickly. In that way, they were honoring her changeup, knowing they could still catch up to Baumgartner’s hard stuff.
So Earleywine’s strategy this year was to have Baumgartner pound batters with hard stuff on the hands and mix in the changeup when they started timing her hard stuff. His theory: Even if Baumgartner only throws 62 mph, batters wouldn’t be able to turn on 62 on the hands if they were waiting for a changeup.
The plan backfired, Earleywine said.
“I think what happened during the process, Danielle was more concerned about throwing hard so she could jam people, and in doing so, she lost some of the tilt, especially in her dropball,” Earleywine said. “It became just a flat pitch that was jamming people, and the changeup was doing what it was doing, but she had lost her movement.”
Earleywine wants to tweak the approach for Baumgartner’s junior season. He still wants the game plan to be a mix of hard stuff on the hands and changeups, but he wants her to focus on movement rather than velocity.
If Baumgartner can get in on batters’ hands with her movement of old and sprinkle in her changeup, which is her best pitch, Earleywine thinks she’ll get back on track.
FAITH IN LALONDE: Earleywine tapped Adam LaLonde as his pitching coach last fall following the departures of associate coach Pete D’Amour and volunteer assistant Doug Gillis. D’Amour had long had a hand in handling the staff and called pitches, and Gillis is “the mechanical guru in the entire nation,” Earleywine said.
D’Amour, who also was an ace recruiter, was hired in September to be the head coach at Kennesaw State, and he made Gillis his pitching coach.
Missouri’s ERA of 3.33 in 2017 ranked last in the SEC, but regardless of who the pitching coach was, it was going to be a tough road to hoe following last summer’s transfers of ace Paige Lowary and veteran arm Tori Finucane. Arm injuries to Conrad, who was projected to be the team’s ace, didn’t help.
Earleywine remains confident that LaLonde is the right person to steward the pitching staff.
“I’ve been around the game my whole life, and I know when somebody’s full of **** and when they’re not,” Earleywine said. “And he’s just not. He knows his stuff.”
Earleywine pointed to Baxter’s success as proof of what LaLonde can do. Baxter had a career year, going 16-10 with a 2.47 ERA.
“I don’t think anybody could’ve done what he did with Cheyenne Baxter this year,” Earleywine said. “Who would’ve thought she’d have a season like that? She was coached by Doug and Pete for three years, and she never got close to having numbers like she had this year.
“And then Madi Norman came in, the transfer from Louisville, and had hardly pitched at all there, and when she pitched, she wasn’t very effective. She came in with no riseball. She was all drop. Although she didn’t have a great year, I don’t think anybody would’ve said, ‘Madi Norman is going to beat Washington.’ ”
QUIET ON THE CONTRACT FRONT: Earleywine had no update on contract extension talks. His contract is set to expire after the 2018 season.
“I just have to make the right moves and get us back to our winning ways, and I think everything will take care of itself,” he said. “I think the new administration, I think we have the right people in place, and I think their expectations are right. I’m on board. I want to be here. Everybody knows that, but just to reiterate, this is where I want to be.”
ON LOWARY: Lowary, who won 43 games in two seasons for Missouri before transferring to Oklahoma, helped the Sooners win the Women’s College World Series.
In Oklahoma’s championship series against Florida, Lowary allowed two earned runs in 10 2/3 innings and collected the win in Game 1, which lasted 17 innings. In Game 2 against the Gators, she tossed a perfect two innings to collect the save.
“Good for her that she went on and did what she did, and we just have to focus on Mizzou and getting us back to where we have to get,” said Earleywine, who said he didn’t tune in to the WCWS.
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Sanchez at catcher next year? - Mizzou Tom KC - 6/14 10:14:59