Reynolds pleased with effort, progress of baseball program

Hubs aiming to build up pitching staff

Russell Hodges
Posted 5/31/17

It was a heartbreaking end to the season for the Hubs varsity baseball team, but head coach Jarrod Reynolds is staying optimistic as the Rochelle boys enter the offseason.

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Reynolds pleased with effort, progress of baseball program

Hubs aiming to build up pitching staff

Posted

ROCHELLE — It was a heartbreaking end to the season for the Hubs varsity baseball team, but head coach Jarrod Reynolds is staying optimistic as the Rochelle boys enter the offseason.

A tough loss to the Sterling Golden Warriors in the IHSA Class 3A Regional Semifinals this past Thursday bumped the Hubs down to 12-13-1 overall to finish the year. While the team’s record was only slightly better than what it was last year (12-16), Reynolds said he was pleased with how his boys competed and how they improved from last year.

“Overall I thought we played really competitive baseball all season long,” he said. “We were right around .500 but our record could’ve been better than that… We were able to allow our seniors to play and a lot of those guys got time. I think it’s always nice when your seniors are your guys in the lineup, and we had some really good moments throughout the year.”

Reynolds also said he was impressed with the performance of Rochelle’s sophomore team, which went 16-8-1 overall and featured several strong showings from players such as Brandon Johnson, Cody Johnson, Hayden Jones and Zack Bernardin. With seven varsity seniors graduating and leaving the program, Reynolds will be looking to his returning juniors as well as his sophomores to fill the void.

“We have some other kids too who, hopefully with a year of development and a year of getting stronger will be ready to go as well,” Reynolds said.

Six players hit over .300 at the varsity level this year including seniors Caleb Gould, Kyle Seebach and Cristian Burciaga, who all received All-Conference honors at the end of the season. Sam Christensen, Landon Griffith and sophomore Johnny Beck are also a part of that group, and a big reason for the team’s offensive success this year, Reynolds said, was its ability to seek out fastballs.

“Our kids were fearless at the plate,” Reynolds said. “I thought they were aggressive and our guys were going up looking for fastballs and they weren’t getting cheated. We really like that, we want our kids to go up there and look to do damage… We just had some games where we couldn’t score enough runs, and we have to continue working on hitting outside pitches and doing damage to the opposite field.”

Seebach, Gould and Beck did the bulk of Rochelle’s pitching this season, while Burciaga, Griffith and juniors Noah Mershon and Riley Lodico also took the mound for the Hubs. Next season may be a rebuilding year on the pitcher’s mound, but Reynolds is excited for the amount of young pitchers he and his staff will get to work with over the next few years.

“Kyle and Caleb did a really good job,” Reynolds said. “Caleb just threw a lot of strikes, which is a lot easier to say than do. He really kept guys off balance throughout the entire year. Those two guys kept us in a lot of ball games… Going forward I think we’re really going to try and develop everybody and, even if they’re not ready to go by their junior year, we hope they’ll be ready by their senior year... There’s a lot to like.”