Update from Head Baseball Coach Scott Heather -- November 2023

Greetings Bucknell Baseball Fans!

We just wrapped up our fall baseball season and I have to say it was a successful campaign for the Bison. As a coach, you want to make sure you come out of the fall healthy as a team and we did that. You want to come out of the fall with excitement about the team’s chances for the spring and we certainly did that. Most importantly, you want your upperclassmen to step into leadership roles and start to establish the identity of what your team will look like in the season. That is what I am most excited about moving forward. This team is hungry and committed to doing whatever it takes to compete for a Patriot League Championship. Our veterans have shown the newcomers the way and have created a good positive environment to come to each day.

We were able to have success against the outside competition that we played as well. We played Penn State on October 15 and beat them 7-3 over 14 innings. We won the first seven innings 5-0 and lost the second seven innings 3-2. It was a great showing by our pitching staff with 18 strikeouts to only three walks against a Big 10 team. It shows what we are capable of as a staff. We threw nine different pitchers in the game and matched up well with Penn State throughout the day. Tyler Dunn and freshman Michael Chiaravallo each had two hits to pace the offense.

In our second outside competition, we played IUP and it was fun to see former major leaguer and Winfield native Steve Kline and so many Lewisburg people come out. He has done a nice job building that program back up. We won both ends of the doubleheader and the bats came alive with eight different players recording two hits. We held them to three runs over the course of 14 innings. Most importantly, we had a chance to look at our entire team and gauge where we are heading into the spring. We still have a few positions to determine and line up formations to look at, but we were able to see what it could look like moving forward.

Overall, I was very pleased with the fall season. Our pitching staff showed that we are very capable on the mound. The off-season focus will be continued development of our command. We were very successful when we got multiple pitches over the plate. This staff might strike more guys out but it will come down to how many free bases we give up. The returning pitchers have improved. Both Tyler O’Neill and Ben Magovern have seen velocity jumps and look to move to the front end of the rotation as juniors. Hadley Maxwell has also shown the ability to go deep into games. We are probably most excited about our freshmen pitcher’s potential and upside. I think you will see them log important innings as first-year players with all contributing early.

Offensively, we return a good start to a solid lineup. Returners Jacob Corson, Grant Voytovich, and Sean Keys are as good as any combo in the league. Our off-season focus will be focused on two things that we feel can help us win. We always use this time to make sure each player is in a good position to hit consistently. Now that we are not competing on a daily basis, our emphasis becomes more centered around the swing and mechanics. We feel that allows us to have adjustability in our swing to be able to compete when it matters most. The other area we will be focusing on will be our plate discipline. We seem to be an aggressive hitting team which is good but as you are seeing in the postseason, not chasing out of the zone can be the difference between winning and losing.

We now turn our focus to our off-season training. We will go four to five times a week with an upgraded emphasis in the weight room and with speed development. We are allowed eight hours a week to work with the players, four for baseball skill development and four for strength and conditioning work. I told the players following our last workout, that this is an opportunity to create some separation between us and others in the league. We have seen many gains in the strength department as well as on the field so far with how hard they have been working. I anticipate that trend to continue and am excited to see how much we improve over the rest of the semester. The season will be here before we know it as it is nearing 100 days away from getting on the bus to head to Wofford.

I will be in touch again soon!

Go Bison!

Scott Heather
Head Baseball Coach
sheather@bucknell.edu

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