The Devils Lake baseball season is 10 games old.
Rainouts — or windouts, to put it more accurately — have thrown a wrench into an already-busy schedule, but the Firebirds have found their footing as the young season has progressed. They started the year with a six-game road trip where they went 2-4, but they’ve since won four consecutive games at home to improve to 6-4.
Here are three takeaways from the action so far.
Jackson Baeth is an impact bat in the lineup
While Devils Lake has an array of options and ways to beat its opponents, Baeth has been the most dangerous bat in the Firebirds’ lineup.
The University of Minnesota Crookston commit actually struggled in the season-opening road trip; he hit the team’s only home run, but he also posted just a .150 OBP. Ever since the team returned to Devils Lake, though, he’s done nothing but mash.
Over the four-game homestand, Baeth went 5-for-10 with a home run, three walks and nine RBIs. He made a couple loud outs, too. High school baseball games don’t display exit velocities, but if they did, it’s safe to say Baeth would have the highest on the team.
Baeth is now batting .307 with a .615 slugging percentage on the season, giving him a team-best .930 OPS. His OBP is only slightly higher than his average at .314, though that’s largely due to three sacrifice flies, which have been productive in contributing to his team-high 14 RBIs. No other Firebird has more than seven RBIs.
Baeth has shown why he’s committed to a Division II school, with strong swings and natural talent on the field. He’s made some good plays at third base as well, showing a good feel for charging in on soft ground balls. The senior knows Devils Lake baseball well at this point, and he said this team is the best he’s been a part of.
“I’ve always been a baseball kid,” Baeth said. “So since I came in as a freshman, I was wanting to grow the program and be a positive leader. It’s good to set an example for the younger kids on what they can do, coming from Devils Lake and going to a bigger college.”
Baeth has played under head coach Brent Luehring since he was in sixth grade. He’s blossomed under Luehring’s leadership, and has a comfortable, trusting relationship with him that should prove valuable in Baeth’s final high school season.
“He’s the best,” Baeth said of Luehring. “If you need to joke around, he’s there to joke around. When you need to be serious, he’s serious. So it’s a perfect mix.”
The team is drawing a lot of walks
The offensive profile Baeth brings to the team is quite different from the style the team has been playing overall. While Baeth offers a power bat with a low OBP relative to his average, the rest of the team has been struggling to come by extra-base hits, yet has found offensive production through a high walk rate.
After 10 games, the team is walking 17.7% of the time. After nine games, that number was over 18% and was exactly equal with the team’s strikeout rate. Despite only hitting .228 and slugging .297 as a squad, the Firebirds have an impressive .375 OBP.
Their weighted on-base average (wOBA), a stat that attempts to measure the true value of a team’s offensive production, is .338, which falls right around “above average” on FanGraphs’ scale. That’s despite zero home runs from anybody not named Jackson Baeth, and a modest eight doubles as a team.
Luehring said this wasn’t necessarily the approach he tried to foster out of the group; rather, they’ve simply been disciplined about not chasing bad pitches.
The leaders of the walk parade are Mason Palmer and Beau Brodina, who have rates of 25.7 and 23.1%, respectively. Brodina has become the leadoff hitter after playing his first three games in the two-hole. And that’s exactly what any team wants in a leadoff hitter: somebody who gets on base, as Jonah Hill in “Moneyball” would say.
Brodina’s batting average has slipped to .222, but he’s still getting on base at a .462 clip. In last Saturday’s doubleheader sweep of Bismarck Legacy, he went 0-for-4 with four walks.
Palmer entered last weekend hitting only .176, but with a ridiculous walk rate above 30% that gave him a .407 OBP. His bat came around over the last two games as well, collecting five hits to boost his average to .320. Palmer’s wOBA is .387, while Brodina’s is .377. That’s not far off from Baeth’s .416 — they’ve just achieved it in completely different ways.
Ben Larson has quietly contributed as well. He’s batting .308 with a .412 OBP, thanks in part to a walk rate nearing 15%. Parker Brodina missed the weekend games due to a basketball tournament, but he has a .391 OBP through his first 23 plate appearances. Max Palmer is only hitting .167, but with a .318 OBP due to an 18.2% walk rate.
A little more thump in the Devils Lake bats wouldn’t hurt, but they’re finding ways to grind out offense. Having P. Brodina back consistently should help too, giving Baeth a little support in the middle of the lineup. Fausten Olson and Max Palmer each recorded their first extra-base hit of the season last weekend, suggesting that maybe there’s a little more in store from their offensive games as well. And with Mason Palmer hitting the way he is now, this Devils Lake lineup could actually be something.
They recorded early-season wins over tough opponents
Competing in the Eastern Region has never been an easy task for Devils Lake, a small school relative to the ones from Fargo, Bismarck, etc.
But this iteration of the Firebirds has already shown it can compete against some of the top schools. Bismarck Legacy was picked first in the West and second in the state in the preseason coaches’ poll; the Firebirds swept a doubleheader over the Sabers. Fargo North ended Devils Lake’s season last year and made it to the state championship game; the Firebirds beat the Spartans too — for the first time in multiple seasons, in fact.
They showed a lot of grit in that Fargo North game in particular. The rain was pouring hard, and Devils Lake trailed 3-1 in the fifth inning. P. Brodina recovered from walking the first two hitters he faced, going on to pitch a complete game. The offense won the game with small ball in the sixth, placing a series of perfect bunts down.
The fundamentals, overall, from Devils Lake have been strong. Probably the messiest baseball they played was early in that Fargo North game, when the conditions were brutal. Luehring has made it clear that he likes to bunt, and so far, the team has been executing that plan well. They likely wouldn’t have won on Monday if they didn’t execute that plan well.
The defense has been solid, which is an asset that Luehring has been preaching to his young pitchers. Underclassmen like Cayden McCarthy and Taydon Triepke have found success on the mound, but Luehring said it’s been an adjustment for them to pitch with a varsity defense. Most of that is just learning to trust the fielders behind them.
The pitching is a big reason Devils Lake has beaten some of these top teams, too. The Firebirds are yet to allow more than six runs in a game, and their team ERA (per nine innings) is 3.45. They own a team K/9 of 9.0 on the dot, with a reasonable walk rate of 4.7 per nine innings. They’ve also yet to surrender a home run this season.
Things are looking up for Firebird baseball. There’s still a long way to go, and a lot of tough matchups ahead of them. But the early signs are good, with a few areas of improvement that could go a long way towards consistent success.
