The Battlin’ Bears earned their nickname last season. Little Cypress-Mauriceville lost the services of two of the baseball team’s starting pitchers for multiple games, yet still finished second in the district race before losing a tough best of three series to Huffman in the second round of the playoffs.
Coach Steve Griffith has several Bears returning from last year. Leading the returning seniors is Jordan Alexander who was all-state. Taylor Gilbert pitches and will hit third for LC-M.
Max Dileo is a player the coach has counted on for two or three years. The newcomer of the year last season was Anthony Bandiero. “That’s kind of the corps of returning starters,” Griffith pointed out. Thayne Toomey on the mound and Austin Smith at second base are two more Bears returning from last season’s squad.
Griffith has quite a few new Bears that he has been looking at that will play this year on the varsity. In the scrimmages he has been batting 12 to 13 different players to give more of them a look at varsity pitching.
Coming on strong in centerfield is Brett Burrows who has done well in the early scrimmages. Hunter Perkins has played well and pitched well. Others that should contribute during the season are Ty Moreland, Carter Claybar, and Ty Shugart for the Bears according to Griffith.
In a unique move Coach Griffith had the LC-M batters take hundreds of simulated at bats during the off season to get them ready for the real deal starting in the spring. Griffith feels pretty good about the Bears’ hitting. With a dozen or more players getting at bats in the scrimmages added to the eleven hundred simulated at bats they had during the winter they should be ready for the start of the season. Griffith analyzed, “We’ve got a lot of guys back that hit well last season, I think we’re going to be okay swinging it, and I think we’re going to be okay defensively.”
What concerns Coach Griffith has about his pitching is relieved by some experienced arms Griffith stated he can build his pitching staff around. Those eleven hundred at bats in the winter means his pitchers have faced over a thousand batters already. His goal Griffith said was to develop a pitching staff.
The Bears have three solid returning pitchers from last season. Toomey threw well with an earned run average under two. Gilbert pitched a no-hitter against Carthage. Bandiero also did a good job on the mound.
The guy that has seemed to come out of nowhere and is very possibly the best Bear pitcher is Dileo. He is knuckleball guy and throws lots of junk with nothing that goes straight which is difficult for high school batters to hit. Dileo threw very well in a scrimmage against Jasper. Griffith evaluated, “I think our pitching staff probably rivals last year’s right now.”
Little Cypress-Mauriceville finished just a game out of first place last season. Coach Griffith believes the Bears will have a chance at the district championship this year. “We feel we can be in the race and get in the postseason. That’s something everybody strives for, and I believe we can pull that off. It’s going to be tough though it’s going to come down to the end for some of these teams. There’s six teams in the district that are going to fight for those four spots,” Griffith concluded.
Texas High School Baseball released this month that Coach Steve Griffith is the winningest active baseball coach in the 4-A Classification for the state of Texas. Griffith and the Little Cypress-Mauriceville Bears have won 585 games during his time as coach.
-Dan Perrine, KOGT-
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