Baseball
Michael Choice hit .376 and is the 2008 SLC Freshman of the Year. |
MAVERICKS BASEBALL TEAM TAKES GIANT STRIDES IN 2008
May 23, 2008
ARLINGTON - - Before the 2008 baseball season, first-year UT Arlington coach Darin Thomas focused on improvement, hard work and doing the right things to improve the Mavericks program. Victories would be a by-product of those things, he said.
Fifty-seven games later, Thomas and his staff can say the mission was accomplished.
UTA was picked to finish last in the conference. The Mavericks finished sixth and advanced to the Southland Conference tournament after a year away from the postseason event. UTA won four SLC games last year. This year, UTA had a winning record, going 16-14 in the SLC. The 2007 Mavericks won 13 games overall.
The 2008 version doubled that total, going 26-31.
Mix in victories against three nationally-ranked teams - Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Texas - and Thomas says UT Arlington is headed in the right direction. Not to mention the fact that, academically, the Mavericks squad of 36 had a cumulative grade-point average in the 2007-08 year of better than 3.0.
"We're not there yet, but we accomplished a lot this year in terms of becoming a better baseball program," Thomas said. "We did more community service, won more games and did much better in the classroom than I think the coaches even expected. We took some pretty big steps this year from where we were a year ago. Am I disappointed that we didn't do better in the conference tournament? Sure. But we competed hard all year long and I'm proud of what our guys did this season."
Consider as well that UTA did it while playing one of the toughest schedules in school history.
The Mavericks had five weeks that included eight games in 10 days, including back-to-back games against Oklahoma State and Texas. UTA took both of those victories. UTA also played SLC regular-season champion UTSA, third-place Texas State and fourth-place Sam Houston State all on the road. Next year, the Mavericks will get those squads at Clay Gould Ballpark.
"We'll still play 55 or 56 games next year, but we won't have nearly as many of those back-to-back games against the Big 12," Thomas said. "We were able to win a couple of those this year, but I don't want to put our club in that position again. We'll still play those teams and do our best to win, but we'll spread them out in a different way."
With a new coaching staff and 22 new players in 2008, the Mavericks got off to a slow start, going 5-11 in the non-conference season before opening SLC play with one victory in a three-game series against Lamar. UTA then dropped two of three against Texas State and the first two against UTSA when the season started to turn around.
UTA won the final game of the UTSA series, 14-7, and started a stretch of winning that the Mavericks hadn't seen in quite a while. From that game on March 30 to April 19, the Mavericks went 12-2. Included in that stretch was the school's first-ever sweep in Lake Charles, La., against McNeese State. UTA won two of three against Sam Houston State, two of three against Southeastern Louisiana and defeated Oklahoma State and Texas. There was also a hard-fought 6-5 loss against Baylor.
The Mavericks, during that period, raised their record from 7-18 to 19-20.
"That stretch of the season is what got us into the conference tournament and gave us a lot of confidence," Thomas said. "The guys needed to have a taste of success. It's difficult in baseball to sustain that, but for that portion of the season we were a very good baseball team and I was extremely happy for our guys because, when things were going bad, they could have just packed it in. Instead, they came out and strung together a bunch of good wins."
Needing to win at least one game in the final regular-season series of the year, UTA swept Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at home and climbed to the No. 6 seed in the 2008 Southland Conference Tournament.
A loss on the first day against Texas State forced a game Thursday against Southeastern Louisiana and pro prospect lefty Wade Miley. The Mavericks season ended, 7-3, as Miley pitched a complete game.
"We just didn't have what it took to match him, and not many people do," Thomas said. "That's why he's probably about to sign a big contract with a Major-League organization. But we were ready to play and did our best in that game. It just wasn't enough."
Standing out in 2008 for UTA was the offensive production from freshman Michael Choice and seniors David McLeod and Danny Slinkman. Those three players finished 2008 as three of the top four hitters in the Southland Conference. Choice, the SLC Freshman of the Year and Second-Team All-SLC pick, was UTA's best hitter at the end of the year and finished with a .376 batting average.
Choice drove in a team-high 51 runs and hit a team-high seven homers.
McLeod, coming back from an arm injury, hit .376 and struck out just four times all year. He was the toughest player to strike out in all of Division I baseball.
Slinkman had a career-high .370 average and a .562 slugging percentage and was named All-SLC Third Team.
Add in three other players hitting .300 or better - Andrew Kainer, Brock Wilson and Matt Otteman - and the Mavericks improved their team batting average from .268 a year ago to .294.
"We have a chance to be very good offensively next year, but the two areas where we really need to improve are pitching and defense," Thomas said. "We have to get better defensively in the infield particularly, and we need to continue to improve our pitching staff, and I think those are areas where we can get better with the guys we have. We just need to work with them and do our jobs as coaches to help them improve."
The Mavericks have just five seniors on the squad - Wilson, Slinkman, McLeod and pitchers Jeff Nollen and Eamonn Donovan.
The SLC rotation of Nathan Long, Andy Sauter and Ryan Robinson, returns as well as nearly all of UTA's bullpen. Robinson, Long and Sauter combined for 15 wins. Also coming back will be relievers Drew Clementz and Ryan Martin, who had earned run averages of 3.16 and 4.23, respectively.
Otteman, the outfielder/pitcher combination, also returns after defeating Texas A&M and Oklahoma State and finishing 2008 with a 4-3 record and 4.35 ERA.
"I feel good about what we did on the field and what we did off the field," Thomas said. "We did more community service this year than we ever have, and we did an outstanding job in the classroom. We have a bunch of good guys who do the right thing. Now, we have to take it up another notch next year and improve on what we've done."
