Season Preview: Seaholm Baseball Hits The Road

Spring break isn’t going to be much of a vacation for the varsity baseball team.

The Maples are hitting the road on Friday for a six-game, six-day road trip to southern Ohio to open the 2012 season. The MHSAA allows teams to play opponents in adjoining states within 300 miles away.

Seaholm is set to face some strong competition from the Cincinnati area starting with a double-header against LaSalle High School and Ross High School on Saturday.

“They are all going to be solid teams,” Maples coach Dan Drapal said. 

Drapal planned the trip for just that reason. Instead of having his players go off to Mexico or Cancun, he wanted them on the field preparing for a league championship.

“We want to make it a yearly thing,” he said. “I want kids to know if you are playing baseball here, this kind of commitment is going to be part of it.”

He had seen the Ohio road trip work at Grosse Pointe South for coach Dan Griesbaum. Griesbaum helped him get in touch with some schools and the trip came together from there.

“Either we take some lumps or we’re competitive, we are going to be a better team either way,” he said.

And Drapal admits it could go either way after some unexpected turns in the offseason.

Last year, Drapal’s first with Seaholm, the team went 19-10 overall and finished in second place in the Oakland Activities Association Blue division with an 11-5 record.

Three of the four Maples players that earned All-OAA honors including junior John Glazier were going to be back in uniform this year. Glazier was expected to anchor the team’s pitching staff.

As a senior, Glazier was the starting quarterback for Seaholm’s varsity football team. He suffered a torn laburm that will keep him out the entire year. 

In an unfortunate coincidence, teammate and fellow pitcher Scott Anderson suffered the same injury during the football season.

He suffered a partial tear of his labrum and had surgery on his shoulder. Drapal is hopeful Anderson can come back in a relief role towards the end of the season, but the injuries left a big hole in the Maples pitching staff.

“It was open tryouts for the pitching staff,” Drapal said. “It’s changed the dynamics of what we could’ve been. It’s definitely a wrench thrown into what we had expected.”

Drapal still has high expectations for the year, but Seaholm will have to relay on some younger players to compete for a division title.

The Maples have four sophomores on varsity this year, including Conor Bowers who is set to try and replace Glazier as the team’s top pitcher. 

“We called him up as a freshman to pitch for us last year,” Drapal said. “He’ll be our ace this year. He really took his lumps last year, but that year of experience is going to help him. He’ll pitch in all of our significant games.”

Barman throws in the low 80’s and has a couple of good pitches. Drapal said one of them is a solid curve ball.

Seaholm will need seniors Michael Doney and Steven Palmeri to get the team going offensively. Both earned All-OAA honors last season.

Doney will start at shortstop and pitch. Before injuring his ankle last year, he batted over .400. Palmeri started at third base last season, but might see time at center field this year. He was also one of the Maples top offensive players in 2011. 

They both will need to have strong years if Seaholm wants to bring home a title in the realigned OAA White.

Coaches voted to realign the OAA into four divisions after last season and group the teams based on geographic location. The Blue last year was Seaholm, city-rival Groves, all three Farmington high schools, West Bloomfield and both Bloomfield Hills high schools.

Both Bloomfield schools stayed in the Blue division, while the rest of the teams now make up the White.

“We probably were going to be one of the teams to beat and now we’re going to have to prove ourselves a little bit,” Drapal said.

OAA Baseball Season Previews