Update from Head Baseball Coach Scott Heather -- October 2023

Greetings from Lewisburg!

The players have been hard at work and fall break is almost upon us. We are about halfway through our fall practice portion. We are a few weeks into intrasquad scrimmages where we are building pitch counts and getting at-bats. We have also spent a considerable amount of time working in strength and conditioning. Our weekly fall format has looked like this:

Monday- Team Meeting and Lift
Tuesday – Player Development Individuals and Lift
Wednesday- OFF
Thursday- Practice and Speed Development
Friday- Lift Practice or Scrimmage
Saturday- Scrimmage
Sunday- Scrimmage

We try to use Tuesdays for more individual time where the focus can be on individual player development. On Thursdays, we try to put in our team concepts. As the weekend approaches, we spend much of our time playing and trying players out at different positions. There is still a lot to be determined moving forward but we are shaping up to be a strong offensive team. As you can see, we are spending four days each week on strength and speed. That has been an area we have targeted to try to improve on in the offseason. We return six starters positionally so the goal is to enhance what they can do from a physical standpoint this fall. This setup gives us plenty of individual time with the pitchers as well so we can focus on the specific needs of each pitcher. This staff has already shown a major upside. The biggest area we have seen and are addressing is the ability to command the baseball. When we have done that at a high rate, they have been successful.

We have our two fall games coming up after fall break with the first one being against Penn State on Oct. 15. It will be great to see where we are at against a top-level opponent.

I also wanted to release our spring schedule. We are excited to announce 21 home games for the 2024 slate. I think this is a competitive schedule, as always, with a little bit different wrinkle than playing the Power-5 programs early in the season. The goal this year is to play a few top mid-majors who have taken the next steps as programs, and so we have scheduled Wofford and Campbell, two programs that have been elite the last few years. I believe it’s important to show our players what the next step looks like. There have been many positives the last couple of years and now the challenge is sustaining that level and getting beyond. It will be great for both the coaching staff and players to see programs like that firsthand.

The full schedule can be found here. Thanks for reading and staying connected to the program. I will be in touch again soon after our fall competitions with a full fall recap.

Go Bison!

Scott Heather
Head Baseball Coach
sheather@bucknell.edu

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