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| Photo Credit: St. Joseph’s Athletics |
In his first year at the helm for the St. Joseph’s Golden Eagles, Richard Garrett’s squad struggled to a 17-20 overall record (9-7 conference).
He is confident, however, that this team has made the necessary improvements to take the next step and compete with the likes of Old Westbury and Farmingdale State for the Skyline Conference title.
“We had an excellent recruiting class coming in,” said Garrett. “We had a ton of injuries last season. We lost our top six players. Three of them are coming back,” he said.
That alone should warrant the improvement necessary to finish over .500. When you factor in new players such as INF James Nakashian, C Brendan Sullivan (from Farmingdale) and P Nick Girardi, the team could make some noise.
Of course, the team will need to improve on last year’s power outage. They compiled a .319 SLG percentage and struck out nearly twice as frequently as they walked. That could certainly be a product of the injuries on the field, but in a conference that leans heavily towards offense, the Golden Eagles will need to show that they can put up some offensive firepower.
“Our strength will be in our defense, our speed and our very deep pitching staff,” he said.
Glenn Patriss will be returning to the pitching staff. Last season he compiled a 2.83 ERA while winning three games for the Golden Eagles.
The challenges will be replacing recently departer Dan DiBlasio, who was easily their most productive player last season. He batted .342 with 24 RBI and only seven strikeouts at the bat. He also was arguably their best pitcher–tieing for the team-lead with three wins and compiling a team-low 2.38 ERA in 53 innings.
Garrett is glad to have him back serving as a coach this season.
They will open up the season on February 27 against Ithaca at home. They will travel to Florida for their annual Gene Cusic Classic tournament for seven games.
The Golden Eagles will certainly be a much improved team in 2015. It remains to be seen whether then can thwart Farmingdale’s reign atop the conference.
