Coming off of a season that saw them cruise to a perfect record against Prince George’s County 4A competitors and win the regional championship before losing in the state semifinals, the baseball team came into this spring with high expectations.
The Raiders have delivered so far, posting an unblemished record through their first six games while outscoring their opponents by a combined score of 88-6.
Roosevelt coach Andrew Capece said there’s still plenty of room for improvement, though, and recently talked to Patch about his thoughts on the young season.
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Greenbelt Patch: What were your expectations for the season?
Capece: Our goals are always the same. I mean, our goal is to win the county — I mean, we’re usually in the mix. And we want to win the regular season and then win the region and get to the [state] final four and see what we can do against the top competition outside. Those are our general goals, but we don’t talk about that a lot during the year. We know that we have a long way to go, so we just try to get better each day.
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Patch: Do you bring back much experience from last year?
Capece: We return our entire pitching staff, which is a great start. We did have a lot of holes to fill in other places. We lost, I think, five starters — two outfielders, our catcher, our third baseman and second baseman — so we did have quite a bit of turnover in some other areas.
Patch: Is this team capable of making another state tournament trip?
Capece: We don’t really consider ourselves a great team right now. Every day we go out and we see a ton of things we need to work on. So, we just kind of set short-term goals, and a lot of games, it’s not even the outcome. We may win a game, but we’re more focused on some of the smaller things we do with some of the at-bats and how we run the bases and things like that. Overall, we just try to get better every day. And then when we get to the end of the season, try to turn it on and see what we can do in a short, single-elimination kind of tournament.
Patch: You haven’t really been tested through the first six games of the year. Have you been pleased with your team’s overall performance?
Capece: The scores look kind of lopsided, but a couple of the games, we weren’t real happy with our performance. The Laurel game, starting off we really didn’t hit the ball too well, and the High Point game, we got shutout almost through five innings. We got one in the fifth and then we broke it open in the sixth.
Patch: What has been your primary focus early on?
Capece: We have to get better to hit good pitching: real, top-caliber pitching. Average pitching, we’ll do pretty well against and we’ll look like we’re world beaters. But you get a strong pitcher out there on any given day, and he can be the difference. That’s the thing we’re trying to guard against, because when you get into the postseason, you’re going to see everybody’s best — everybody’s ace — and if you’re not able to put the ball in play and put some pressure on them, then you can be beaten.
Patch: Is that a lesson your players learned last season?
Capece: Definitely. I mean, it’s not a surprise — we go play some good teams early on, and we try to scrimmage some quality teams. And I think our guys, most of them, know the difference. They know that there’s guys out there who can really bring it, and you’ve got to turn it up. Sometimes it’s tough when you don’t see that caliber on a consistent basis, you know? You see it every fourth or fifth game, or maybe you only see it twice a year at the end. So in your mind, you know that that’s out there, and you try to prepare for it, even when you’re not seeing that level of pitching.