With fewer experienced arms in their rotation, UBC’s baseball team is hoping to find a way other than pitching to win games.

“That’s the big question mark,” said coach Terry McKaig when asked how their pitching rotation will hold up.

Last year, the T-Birds won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) West conference title, but got knocked out of the second round of the NAIA playoffs, finishing the season with a 31-17 record.

And many of those games were won from the mound; the T-Birds posted a 2.91 team earned run average (ERA) last year, the lowest of any squad in the Cascade Collegiate Conference.

But during the off-season, the team lost three of their starting pitchers—Brandon Kaye, Eric Brown and Sheldon Mcdonald—to the MLB draft, while closer Shawn Hetherington moved on to the Calgary Vipers.

“To lose four seniors, and those were our three starting guys, and then Hetherington was an all-region closer the last couple of years, I can’t tell you that you just pick up where you left off,” said McKaig.

He maintained that although the pitching staff is younger, they have a strong recruiting class.

“These are good kids and good arms. But they’re not going to have the experience that those four guys did last year,” he said.

“We have some guys on the mound that can really win us some big games—David Otterman, Danny Britton-Foster, Miles Verweel—these are returners that had good years all last year.”

Otterman said that he’s looking forward to having a larger presence in the rotation.

“I’m definitely going to have to carry a bigger role this year with those guys gone, losing those four guys to professional baseball. So I’m willing to take the brunt of the load now as one of the returning starters.”

A left-handed third-year from Coquitlam, Otterman had a 3.00 ERA last year, with 35 strikeouts in 45 innings.

He said that he’s heartened by the fact that former teammates like Kaye and Brown got drafted into the majors.

“Everybody’s goal here is to move on and play at the next level and they showed that that’s possible,” he said. “So it gives guys like me hope.”

McKaig said that although he’s confident in his pitching staff, he expects offence to be the team’s strongest asset.

“I’m sure there’ll be some days where we’re not treated to the great pitching that we’ve had,” he said. “[But] our offence can take a big step forward versus the last couple of years and I think they can win us some games.”

And one of the players that will be leading the offence is left-fielder Blake Carruthers.

Carruthers led the T-Birds with a .315 batting average and 38 RBIs last season. He was also named an NAIA Scholar-Athlete, awarded to players that demonstrate excellence on the field and in the classroom.

“[That was] a nice acknowledgement of being a student-athlete [and] of being able to excel at both parts,” he said.

He pointed to the team’s mix of youth and experience as an asset going forward. “Our guys are definitely up to the challenge,” he said. “We got guys like [Otterman] who are coming back from a pretty good sophomore year and looking for guys a little bit younger to lead the pack, and it’s going to be exciting.”

The T-Birds season begins with the Lewis-Clark State Tournament in Idaho this weekend, which will be followed by away games in California next week.

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