By: Erik Sargent PBR Michigan Staff Writer

 

Team of the Week: Traverse City Central

This week’s team of the week for Prep Baseball Report is from the northern part of the state as we feature Traverse City Central High School.

The Trojans are coached by second-year head coach Pat McDonald and play in the Big North Conference. The Trojans are currently 6-6 on the season and feature a young squad.

“We’re pretty young,” McDonald said. “It’s kind of a two-year building year, we were young last year as well. There’s a group of younger baseball players coming up that are really strong baseball kids.”

The young Trojans have four seniors who are starters but feature a heavy dose of sophomores and juniors on their squad and they are still improving as an overall group.

“Pitching is definitely something we are trying to get better at,” McDonald said. “Hitting is probably our strong point, we’re pretty good hitters from top to bottom and we put the ball in play with not that many strikeouts.”

While the Trojans are only 6-6, McDonald said that the record doesn’t represent how well they’ve played. They lost four of those games in the bottom of the seventh inning, a tough pill for the coach to swallow.

“That hurts a lot,” McDonald said. “That just shows you that we don’t have enough pitching to finish games and those four losses hurt a lot, we should be 10-2 but we’re sitting at 6-6.”

The Trojans didn’t make any trips during the offseason or on spring break, but they put in plenty of work during their open gyms to get ready for the season, according to McDonald.

As for players getting looked at, McDonald pointed out junior infielder Cooper Marshall as someone who is getting interest from numerous schools at the next level. Marshall plays second, shortstop and third for the Trojans.

“(Marshall) is definitely getting a lot of interest from all sorts of colleges right now,” McDonald said. “I know Wayne State, Northwood, mostly Division 1 interest, he’s also got some interest from Army as well.”

The future looks bright for the program, as McDonald pointed out numerous players doing well at the junior varsity levels as well as the young talent they have on varsity.

“We’re just trying to rebuild and start a program, starting from the bottom up at Little League,” McDonald said. “We have a lot of growth that is going to happen.”

PBR Michigan will host our first showcase this summer at Traverse City Central HS on July 15^th. Sign up for this event and all our events at http://www.prepbaseballreport.com/michigan/events