After losing starting players, closers and key reserves to graduation, Culver City High School baseball head coach Rick Prieto will look for sophomores and juniors from last year’s junior varsity squad to take on leadership roles for a varsity program that has reached the CIF playoffs for 10 straight years.
The Culver City News recently interviewed Prieto about his expectations, new team leaders and how he sees the Centaur pitching staff.
CCN: After losing so many players to graduation, is this going to be a year of rebuilding?
RP: I’ve been asked that many times before and I’ll answer it now, the same way. I don’t really know what the term “rebuilding” means. This program has been to the playoffs for 10 consecutive years. We didn’t rebuild then, so we’re not rebuilding now.
CCN: Who among the junior and senior players do you expect to step up and become the team’s leaders?
RP: You’re always looking for the sophomores and juniors from the JV team to step up and this year they have the opportunity. But the most important thing is our “core players” that we currently have in place. We have three returning varsity players. Two of them were All-League last year. That’s our foundation, right there.
CCN: Do you expect them to lead by example?
RP: Right. Timothy will be our centerfielder, and Juan will be our first baseman. Daniel Hennessy is our catcher now. We converted him from third base. These are our core players. Nate Matthews, who pitched about 16 innings, last year, will be playing in the outfield this season. He has a strong arm and is good-sized. He can hit the ball. Jay Sterner will be in right field.
We have two freshmen starting. At second base is Michael Netzel and at third is Kelvin Murillo. We are putting two young men into a situation where I believe they can play. They have had experience playing summer baseball from mid-June until August and winter baseball from early October to mid-February.
CCN: What about the pitching this year?
RP: It’s not as deep as we have had in the past. Last year, we had nine guys who could pitch at the varsity level. This year we have Sterner coming back. He had a great season last year. He pitched that phenomenal game against Santa Monica last year. He beat them 1-0 in seven innings. What an outing that was. We’re excited that he is going to continue on from where he was last year.
We have Eli Bowie who is a sophomore coming up from the JV team, as well as Nate Matthews who pitched 14 innings last year and Jake Wells. So we went from nine pitchers to just four. I’m expecting to do a lot of things with them.
Daniel Hennessy will be our closer. We hope to get six to nine outs a week from him. We are expecting three to six outs from Louie Ortega and about three to six outs a week from Moisés Amador, Jr. They’ve gotten pitching experience from summer and winter baseball. I believe they are going to go out there and get the job done.
CCN: Each pitcher has his own individual style of pitching. Will your starters be your hard throwers?
RP: No, not necessarily this year. We will have Jay Sterner. He compliments his fastball with a really nice good curve. Nate Matthews will be our hard thrower. He will have to carry on for Tyler Mark and rev it up a little. He’s got a very good curveball when he’s on. He and Jay are going to be our hard throwers. Eli Bowie will be more of a spot pitcher. He’ll change speeds as well as Jake Wells.