It’s not taped in the locker room, and it’s not something the players talk about every day at practice. But Boston College baseball’s goal for this season is pretty clear, according to BC head coach Todd Interdonato.
“The reason you play in this league, or the SEC, is because you feel like it gives you the best opportunity to get to the postseason and go play in a regional,” Interdonato said. “That’s just always kind of the underlying goal, is that you want to get to the postseason and see what happens.”
The Eagles get ready to open their season against South Carolina Upstate on Feb. 14. What happens there, and in the 55 regular season games that follow, will determine whether the Eagles will play in the ACC Tournament and get a bid to the NCAA Tournament after that.
Only time will tell if the Eagles will find themselves in that position, but here’s the breakdown of the position BC finds itself in as it kicks off its spring season.
Room for Improvement
The Eagles finished 8–22 in conference play last season with a 22–31 overall record and missed the ACC Tournament. They ended the season with a 10–0 loss to Clemson in eight innings—not a sweet way to go out.
But Interdonato, entering his second year as BC’s head coach, is hopeful the Eagles have said goodbye to those first-year woes.
“Our expectations are to be able to play with a much deeper understanding of our brand of baseball in year two with our coaches and our staff,” he said.
That expectation is simple but critical.
“Certainly a learning curve for us as a coaching staff, for our players to come in and try to basically blend together,” Interdonato said. “But this year, I expect to be much more on the same page from the start of the first game.”
Roster Notes
Some Things Change
Using the Eagles’ performance last season to predict the coming season is all good and well. But in reality, the Eagles are largely a new team.
BC welcomes 11 freshmen and 10 transfers—that means 21 players on the 43-man roster are new faces that might be capable of giving BC a fresh spark.
“Freshmen don’t really have a choice, because they’ve never been in another program, so what they’ve learned here is all they know,” Interdonato said. “But transfers, they’ve learned another system, they’ve learned another program. So they really have to put themselves secondary when they come in. And, you know, those guys have done a really good job of that.”
Outfielder Jack Toomey, a transfer from Holy Cross, earned All-American honors his freshman year and led his team with nine home runs last season.
Josiah Ragsdale, meanwhile, played two seasons at Iona before making the move to BC. He started all 50 games last season and was named first-team all-conference. The junior outfielder also led his team in runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, and stolen bases with a team-high .385 batting average.
Catcher Gunnar Johnson played three seasons at Wofford and helped the program to its first NCAA Tournament win last season while posting a .304 career batting average.
Interdonato named those three transfers specifically as meshing well into BC’s program thus far.
“Those guys all came in, and their main focus was to be a good teammate and kind of learn how this program is operated,” he said. “When you come in with that kind of secondary mindset, and that you’re the one who needs to adjust, I think it just makes everything so much better. And the pitchers have done the same thing.”
Pitching transfers include Dyland Howanitz, Karl Meyer, Matthew Spada, JD Ogden, Peter Schaefer, Alex Bryant, and John Kwiatkowski.
“On the pitching side, I just think it’s a collective group of our transfers,” Interdonato said when asked who could make a difference this season. “None in particular, but just how deep that transfer class is, and the way those guys are going to be able to contribute.”
The freshman class also boasts a hefty number of pitchers, with six listed as pitchers going into the season.
Some Stay the Same
Interdonato praised the Eagles’ offseason pickups, both in the transfer portal and the incoming freshmen class. But when asked who will shine this season, he named a familiar face.
“Pat Roche is the one that just keeps sticking out in my mind,” Interdonato said. “He’s basically been healthy from the end of [last] season to the start of the season, and this is the first time in his career that he’s been able to do that. And in my experience, when you see those guys that have never had that opportunity, and then they get it, a lot of times they come out and play really well.”
Roche has been at BC since his freshman year and is now a first-year graduate student. The infielder started 29 of the 33 games he appeared in last season, and finished with 23 RBIs and 10 stolen bases.
Other returners that have proved themselves to be big contributors include Nick Wang, Kyle Wolff, Vince Cimini, Adam Magpoc, and Sam McNulty. Those five players accounted for 26 of the Eagles’ 55 total home runs last season.
Cimini and McNulty are also two players Interdonato credits with being leaders on this year’s team.
“Those guys are just kind of the voice of reason for all those younger guys,” Interdonato said.
One significant departure is Cameron Leary, who led the team in home runs last season with 15 and has moved on to play minor-league baseball. Other notable departures include Parker Landwehr and Cam Caraher.
Stiff Competition
Most people look at a team’s roster, talent, coaching staff, and such to predict its success. But often forgotten about, and perhaps what’s most important, is the team’s schedule.
The ACC is one of the strongest conferences in all of college baseball, and the Eagles are ranked dead last in the preseason poll. Predictions and preseason polls can only tell so much, but it is overwhelmingly clear that this conference is not a forgiving one.
What sticks out about the Eagles’ coming season is not the fact that they will be traveling 3,000 miles cross-country to take on recently-joined ACC opponent Cal Berkeley.
“I’ve had a few people ask me, like, ‘Hey, what sticks out about the schedule? You know, I’m thinking Stanford at home and Cal on the road,’” Interdonato said. “Our first three ACC weekends are three teams that were in Omaha last year, right? That’s what sticks out to me.”
The Eagles will open conference play on March 7, when they travel to Charlottesville to take on Virginia, the No. 2-ranked team in the country going into the season.
BC will have a one-game “break” versus Merrimack before it heads right back into conference play for its second ACC series—another weekend spent on the road, this time to take on No. 9 Florida State.
After those trials are over, the Eagles will have No. 14 Wake Forest circled on the calendar a few weeks later.
Although those will probably be the Eagles’ hardest conference games, they shouldn’t count on the rest of the ACC to lie down—programs such as North Carolina and Louisville will certainly pose a challenge.
Fortunately for BC, it’ll avoid the likes of No. 11 Duke, No. 13 NC State, and No. 15 Clemson in its regular-season slate. On the other hand, there’s absolutely no promise for what troubles lay ahead if the Eagles find themselves traveling to Durham for the ACC Tournament at the end of May.
“It’s also what we sign up for, right?” Interdonato said. “Like, we love how good this league is. As daunting of a task as it looks like, it’s also what’s exciting about it.”
With the Baseball Beanpot recently approved to make its return to Fenway Park, the Eagles will pay a visit to the historic ballpark on April 29 to play in either the consolation round or compete for the title. The Eagles have won two of the last three Beanpot titles and post a 44–19–1 record in the tournament.
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