ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Larry Sudbrook’s 33rd season wasn’t supposed to end this way.
St. Bonaventure’s veteran baseball coach, late last spring, concluded that the 2018 campaign could be one of the best of his long career.
Instead, the Bonnies season concluded Friday afternoon with an Atlantic 10 doubleheader split at Rhode Island.
The 14-7 loss and 4-3 win led Bona to a 10-33 finish (6-15, A-10) with seven games cancelled by the weather.
For Sudbrook, surpassing the 700-victory mark was small consolation in a season that, circumstantially, fell far short of expectations.
He entered the campaign eight wins shy of that milestone, but it took 29 games to reach 700. The victory in yesterday’s season finale ended a 10-game losing streak.
So what happened?
“We changed our recruiting philosophy four or five years ago and this was supposed to be the fourth year of it, which would have meant we would really be good this season,” Sudbrook said, shortly after logging his 700th win. “The thing that changed was some of the guys we brought in blew up even better than we had hoped and we lost three of them (pitcher/first baseman Aaron Phillips, shortstop Cole Peterson and third baseman David Hollins) to the major league draft.
“We lost four seniors last year, but you can’t also lose three juniors in June when you’re St. Bonaventure University. You can if you’re the Miami Hurricanes.”
Sudbrook, heading into his 34th season with a 702-765 record (309-386 A-10), admitted, “If I was to tell you that when we brought Aaron Phillips and Cole Peterson in that we knew they were going to go in the ninth round and 13th round and be the Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year and the First Team A-10 shortstop (as juniors), I’d be lying.
“We thought they were kids that had the ability to get getter … and they did. But they got so good, we didn’t get to keep them their senior year. It’s something that’s a little unique to our sport.”
The Bradford resident added, “We were elated for them because Major League Baseball gives them a full ride the last year of college. They’re getting tuition, room, board, fees, books, just like a basketball scholarship. Cole got $120,000 or $140,000 cash and you’re happy for that kid and tell him to sign because he can finish his degree in two falls in a row … but you also know a couple of days after that you’re going to (stink) the next year.”
That’s what happened to the Bonnies this season after losing its three best players last summer.
Of course, Sudbrook, whose strength was mining gems from rural schools within a 150-mile radius, has found his recruiting becoming incrementally more difficult.
“One of our best recruiting areas in all the time I’ve been here is central Pennsylvania. Not recently, because of travel ball, but back in the day, Pennsylvania took its American Legion baseball very seriously. It was a big deal to be on the local Legion team playing for your town,” he said. “A lot of times, between Philly and Pittsburgh, I could find some really good baseball players. I used to say, ‘If my lawn chair was sitting on flat ground, I’m probably not going to get that kid … I need to be some place out in the hills where I could find those people.’
“But in the last 10 years, that’s getting harder to do because there are so many recruiting services. One of them that’s really good is PBR (Prep Baseball Report), which we use too, there’s one in 46 of 50 states. You can put a kid’s name in the internet, put baseball after it, and boom, his PBR report pops up … we know what his exit (velocity) is off the tee, what he throws, what he does the 60-yard dash in. So it’s harder to find (an recruited) kid in Galeton (Pa.) or Kane (Pa.), which we’ve done … because those kids are on PBR too.”
Sudbrook added, “I heard Billy Beane (Oakland general manager) saying how the current thing is to ‘blow your team up’ if you get to a point where you think you’re not going to be .500 or competitive. You blow the team up and rebuild. But Billy also said, ‘That sounds great until you have to play that season the next year … and you’re not very good. It takes a while.’
“We got caught in that a little bit this year because we feel like we’d gotten to a point (where) that first year we played all those freshmen and got our butt kicked. The next year we had a winning season and were competitive, and the next year we were third (in the A-10) and you think you’re going to be pretty good (this year).”
However, he noted, “The MLB draft sort of interrupted the cycle so we’re back to playing the young kids, getting our butt kicked and starting the cycle again. I don’t think, with 6.1 scholarships that we can be one of the top three teams in the league every year. We can take our shots at it, but we have to rebuild the program every year or two and I think next year we should be back to being competitive.
“When you play 18- and 19-year-olds against 21- and 22-year-olds, you’re going to lose. We joke among the staff that we (weren’t) bad this year (eight one-run losses) … we’re just not good enough to beat you. We’re going to give you a ballgame, but probably end up losing.”
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
