Preview: CMU baseball looks to bounce back with new team
After a less than ideal first season back in Mt. Pleasant for head coach Jake Sabol, his Central Michigan baseball squad finished with a 17-38 overall record and last place finish in the Mid-American Conference. He looks to turn it around in the 2025 season.
Brand new team
In Sabol’s first year at the helm, the Chippewas featured a veteran-led team that carried over many players from former head coach Jordan Bischel’s past squads.
“We learned a ton from a year ago, a lot of things that worked really well, that we're going to continue with moving forward,” head coach Jake Sabol said. “We had a bunch of older guys who were just so locked in on what they had done before and not that they weren't bought in or anything, because they certainly were.”
This year’s team will feature 23 new faces that Sabol and his coaching staff were able to hand-pick, to play the kind of ball they want to play.
“So, for us we got 23 new players right now, obviously, gave us a chance his first time around, to bring in 23 new guys who all played the way that we want our program to play and what we want to look like on the field,” Sabol said.
“When you have 23 new players, that's over half our roster,” Sabol said. “There could be some scenarios this year where you see nine, nine new guys in the lineup.”
One place you will see a lot of new faces is on the pitching side of things, as CMU graduated its three weekend starters in All-MAC pitchers Keegan Batka and Adam Mrakitsch, while Ben Vitas also started 10 games for the Chippewas last season.
“Some new guys, Hayden Bailey, Liam Stumpf, Alejandro Espinoza, those are guys that are in the mix, that will be in there on the weekend for us,” Sabol said. “It's a new group, a lot of names that you probably never heard of quite yet.”
“We got a bunch of dudes in our pitching staff that are going to help out tremendously,” catcher Spencer Verburg said. “They're all going to play a role. They all bring their own unique aspect which is going to be really beneficial.”
Leadership
With a whole new team, the Chippewas will look to its few remaining program players to lead the way in example. Some of those faces will be Spencer Verburg, Evan Waters and Cole Prout.
“They were a part of the old coaching staff here and had a lot of success. But also, they went through what we went through last year, so they've seen it both ways,” Sabol said.
Waters, who has seen significant playing time (42 appearances, 7 games started) in his first two years as a pitcher at CMU, looks to be the ace of the rotation heading into the start of the season.
“He's (Waters) had a really nice last two or three months for us,” Sabol said. “His first two years, he was able to get on the mound a little bit in some different roles and have some big, meaningful innings for us. But he's kind of taken it up a notch.”
“We kind of challenged him a little bit earlier in the year, and you know we chart everything that we do from a pitching standpoint and right now he is at the top of those leaderboards,” Sabol said.
Another returning name and someone poised for a breakout season is catcher Spencer Verburg, who is now entering his third season with the Chippewas. In his previous two seasons, he has seen action in 37 games, while starting 21 games behind the plate.
“In my four years here, like you said, we had some really good teams, some not so great teams. But the only thing that the guys need to know, that we talked about pretty much all year so far is that, like, even if we got our backs to a wall, it only takes us,” Verburg said.
Verburg, who has spent time behind former key Chippewas Drew Stengren and Nick Dardas, looks to take a leap and contribute in a big way this spring.
“I've been here for four years, and I’ve been behind some really good guys,” Verburg said. “I've been working hard and really looking to help this team out any way I can and show them that it's not really about me, it's about us as a team, and we got something to prove this year, especially coming off a not great year last year.”
Expectations
Finishing last year at the bottom of the MAC, it will be an uphill battle for CMU. The team will start its season down south, but the schedule seems to favor them compared to years past.
Last season, the team played Oklahoma State, who eventually finished ranked No.21 in the finals NCAA rankings of the year, and in 2023, started the season with Baylor which is a national program.
This season, CMU will only face one team with a winning season from last year before entering MAC play, with that team being Western Kentucky, who finished the season 36-22.
“Man, we had a tough schedule,” Sabol said on last year’s season.
Something Sabol wants to see in his team this season is improvement from an offensive standpoint, as last year, the team struggled to create scoring opportunities.
“We were at the bottom of the league and just about every offensive category last year, outside of stolen bases, and sometimes we were doing that out of necessity to try to score runs,” Sabol said. “You can't win if you don't score.”
“Taking care of the baseball when you have the opportunity, throwing the ball over the plate, allowing your defense to work, taking good swings offensively, and just buying into the game plan and trying to be tough on your opponent,” Sabol said, “those are some things across the board that are going to be really important to us to have success.”
Coming off a tough year and welcoming an almost brand-new team, Sabol isn’t setting lofty expectations, but it isn’t shying away from the end goal, which is championships.
“We talk about competing for championships all the time, and I think you can do that,” Sabol said. “I'm not going to sit here and say our goal is to be in Omaha. Certainly, that would be an amazing accomplishment for us, but we're trying to get better tomorrow, right? So, if we can go be one on opening day, then that's great. We've accomplished what we're trying to do; now let's go play two on Saturday and see we see where we can end up after that.”
CMU opens its season in Houston, Texas, as it faces Houston Christian in a four-game set with opening day scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on February 14th.
