MCC Baseball kicks off season on Friday
Thursday January 24, 2024 - 2:15 p.m. | Dylan DeVlieger
The MCC Baseball team takes the field for opening day of their 2024 season on Friday as they host Arizona Christian University.
MCC is coming off a down season where they went 22-23 (8-30 ACCAC). Last year was the first full season that the team didn't eclipse 10 or more conference wins in program history.
Looking back at their 2023 campaign MCC's batting wasn't the main issue during the season. They had seven players bat over .300 and five of those seven held a .330 or higher batting average.
The T-Birds could score runs at a reasonable pace as they averaged a little over five runs per game throughout the year.
On the other side of the ball MCC did consistently struggle from the mound. The Thunderbirds freshman pitching rotation had issues at times to not only get outs but to keep opponents off the scoreboard.
Due to this, going into his 30th season at the helm head coach Tony Cirelli spent as much time as he could during fall ball with his pitchers. With the help of longtime assistant Tom Novak, the coaching staff is very encouraged with the strides the group has made.
""If they're going to struggle it's going to be on me cause I was with them," said Cirelli, "Tom's really good with the nuts and bolts he's done such a good job with these guys and they've come a long way it's been a really good fall."
As a whole the Thunderbird pitchers had a 5.80 ERA (13th in ACCAC), struck out 279 batters (14th in ACCAC), and walked 254 batters (11th in ACCAC).
In all sports, teams will go through lulls and with a season as long as baseball those stretches of great and not so great baseball are bound to happen.
Though MCC was able to string together four straight wins twice during the year and three straight wins five times, when they hit a slump it seemed to stick around more than they would've liked it to.
During late Feb. and into March MCC hit a stretch of nine straight losses, in those losses they were outscored 73-27. During that stretch the Thunderbirds scored two or fewer runs in five of the nine games and allowed five or more runs in seven of the nine contests.
Mesa was able to snap the streak and went on to win three straight before they hit another losing streak, this time a 12 game slump. During this stretch they were held to two or fewer runs in eight of the 12 games and allowed five or more runs in 11 of the 12 contests.
Putting last season behind them Cirelli is very pleased with what he saw during fall ball especially from pitchers Connor Dolittle, Eric Nachtsheim, and Troy Benko who are poised for breakout seasons.
"We had some guys that showed some promise, they got lots of outings, we may not use them in long outings, more like give me an inning here and there," said Cirelli.
MCC has a strong group of sophomores who are coming off of great freshman campaigns.
Augustin Fernandez appeared in 48 games and had a .321 average. He had a total of 20 RBIs (five RBIs in his final eight games).
Bret Housel who made DII All-Region 2nd Team appeared in 46 games holding a .346 batting average. Housel hit four home runs, scored 27 runs, and led the team in RBIs with 25.
Josh DeGroot who made DII All-Region 1st Team appeared in 45 games last season, leading the team in batting average with .357 while also leading the charge with 12 stolen bases.
The Thunderbirds kick off their season on their home field on Jan. 26 and will stay at home until they begin conference play on Feb 9 as they will travel to Paradise Valley.
