Troy Post 43 Baseball opens its 49th season, Saturday May 29th at 1:00 pm at Anthony Wayne HS where they will meet Whitehouse American Legion in a doubleheader. “Memorial Day Weekend is an opportunity play 3 quality teams and get a feel for how this year’s team actually is configured. I’d like to play all the pitchers in 5 games and see what we need to work on. Monday, they will meet another fine team the Cincinnati Riverbats at 1pm at home and then host the Cincinnati Fury on Tuesday evening at 7pm. Wednesday, June 1st, we start playing 9 inning games.

We play Pemberville Legion on Wed. night at home. Then we travel, Thursday, to Ottawa Legion. Friday we play our 1st league game vs Greenville at home at 7. That’s 8 games in 6 days and which I feel will test our depth and our understanding of our system.”

“I like our schedule. Our June 10-11-12, Veteran’s Appreciation Tourney, is a very competitive tournament and attracts a good group college and pro scouts. We will be going back out to Omaha, for the prestigious Decker CWS Tournament June 22nd- 26th. In our spare time we’ll attend several NCAA Div. I College World Series Games. We are headed back to Lancaster for their 4th of July Classic, which we won last summer. Their tournament is chock full of quality teams with great traditions like ours. We will be returning to the NABF World Series in Youngstown, Ohio where the best teams from all over the country come in and compete. We finished 4th in 2015 NABF World Series. “We had a great season last year. We won our League, then won Legion District Tournament. We were State Legion Runners Up and we were the1st team area team since 1970 to attend the Great Lakes National Regionals.

Our program is 1832-859, over 49 years and we’ve had nearly 450 young men advance to play in college and 42 have signed pro contracts. This spring we had 16 playing in college but even more impressive is that we have 7 coaching in college.

The start of every legion season is hectic . Between HS Awards Nights, HS Tournament play, All Star Games, and graduations it is very difficult to get everyone together for practice. It’s great to see the enthusiasm of this year’s team. We set out to find exactly the same kind of players for 2016, that enabled us to be 45-18 and Ohio Legion State Runners Up last summer. I feel we have players this year who take pride in their game and have tasted success and will come out every game to compete.

Pitching is the key to every team’s success. “We lost 3 impact pitchers from last year’s staff. 1015 graduates, Trenton Woods, and Ryan Lavy were fixtures on our staff for 3 summers and Zach Greenwald, was named to the 2015 NABF All World Series Team. This summer we are counting on pitchers, who “want the ball”. Other than, 3rd year returnee Chris Heisey, the staff is relatively young and lack inexperienced. I think they will make it up with tenacity. I plan on using Hunter Cohee, Matt Donovan, Dylan Hensley and Mitchell Lindsey and Heisey as starters. Our over all pitching depth has improved. We have a pair of lefty relievers in Jacob Coleman and Dalton Lee plus we have two proven right handers in Noah Roswell and NIck Matney. We intend to develop hard throwing freshman righter, Ian Yunker as a closer. Senior , Anthony Steele is another right hander who’ll work as a closer and has some legion experience. Soph. Perry Casto, is another pitcher, who’ll see action in relief.

The Post 43 catching duties are in great hands, Last year, Ethan Garland stepped in a freshman and caught 60% of the games. He features a rocket arm and hit very well. This year we added 2 very fine catchers. Kieran Williams and Anthony Steele have great arms and give us a tandem of quality receivers. Anthony will see time on the mood and Keiran may see some 3rd base duty.

Post 43 has a veteran look to the 2016 infield. “Last summer, our infield was excellent. We lost Ryan Lavy (1B) and 1st team All NABF World Series, third baseman Cody Harsman. We have the middle infielders back. Greg Peffley and Michael Hale return directly from Marietta University where both were selected All League. “Greg and Michael are an excellent double play combo plus they are hitters with good power.” We have several candidates competing for the 3rd base job. Nick Matney (Sr), Frankie Gmuca (Jr.), Dylan Hensley (Jr), Perry Casto (Jr) and Ian Yunker(Fr) are working at 3rd. At 1st base, Soph. slugger Hunter Cohee and Noah Roswell are front runners at 1st base.

The outfield has a lot of new faces but one familiar one is Brandon Nesbitt. Brandon was our no. 2 hitter in the line up between Peffly and Hale. Brandon returns after competing for Muskingum College this spring.

Brandon has a big year for us and we like what he bring to our team. He is very versatile and could earn a spot at third as well as right field. But he is definitely a top of the order guy. New to the outfield are speedsters, Cory Cottrell (So) and Keaton Mohler (So). I like Cory in centerfield and Mohler in left both have the right skills to be great outfielders.

Coach Frosty Brown is be assisted by Jack Mohler and Ray Lindsey this summer. Frosty Brown is in his 44th year as Head Coach of Troy Post 43. 2016 is our 49th season providing quality baseball exposure to players who aspire to play at the next level.