Baseball has 18 transfers for 2018 season

For the 2018 spring season Southeast’s baseball team has brought in 18 junior college transfers. Now, with 22 new players overall, they hope to bring home another Ohio Valley Conference Championship. So far, the new players have been called on in a 2-6 start, which included Southeast’s first two wins of the season in a weekend split of a four game series with Bowling Green at Capaha Field.

Head coach Andy Sawyers said the reason for so many transfers this season was due to the timing of his hiring at Southeast.

“I was hired August 1st, and it took about a month to find the rest of the coaching staff,” said Sawyers, who is in the start of his second season as head coach at Southeast. “So by the time we got everyone together it was the end of August and all the high- school baseball players had committed already.”

Since Sawyers and his staff had missed the opportunity to recruit high school for the 2018 season, it was decided to add more players to this year’s team who already had college experience. Baseball players at two-year colleges are allowed to sign with four-year schools during the fall of their sophomore year, so Sawyers took advantage of his ability to bring in older players. Sawyers also said before he was hired, former coach Steve Bieser already had recruited some junior college transfers for this upcoming season as well.

“We had a big class coming in (this year) since coach Bieser and his staff had recruited a lot of junior-college transfers,” Sawyer said. “So we had to continue on with that for this class and go heavy in the junior-college market.”

The junior-college newcomers make up nearly half of the Redhawks’ 37-man roster. They graduated 10 players from last year’s team that finished 29-26 overall and fifth in the OVC. This year, Southeast’s team debuted in South Carolina against the College of Charleston. The Redhawks got swept in the three-game series but had a few junior-college transfers step up during their first Division I experience. Sawyers was impressed by junior outfielder Justin Dirden’s overall performance in his first game at the Division 1 level.

“Justin swung the bat pretty dang good and was a very good defender in right field,” Sawyers said.

Dirden previously played two years at Jefferson College and averaged .323 hits with 40 runs scored, eight doubles, 10 home runs and 42 runs batted in 44 starts. Dirden also boasted a .615 slugging percentage, a .474 on-base percentage and had five stolen bases.

Sawyers also was impressed with sophomore pitcher and outfielder Logan Spalt, who made his first Division 1 start on the mound against the Cougars. Spalt took the loss but did not allow an earned run and only one hit over 4 ⅔ innings. The right-hander struck out six batters and walked one. Spalt pitched one year at the junior college level, going 3-0 with a 0.59 ERA for a Parkland College (Illinois) team that went 52-9-1 in 2017. Sawyers said Spalt gave the Redhawks a good outing and there could be a possibility of him getting bumped up later on in the season.

Ultimately, Sawyers said he believes the experienced players will help the Redhawks in the win column. He says he likes his players and thinks there’s a lot of talent but still trying to find out where players fit best.

“I like our pieces, but right now the picture is unclear,” Sawyers said. “It’s like when you take a puzzle apart and put it together, you don’t put all the pieces in the right place on the first go. And for this season, it’s just a matter of getting everyone plugged into the right spot.”