January 12, 2021 – Lakeland, Fla. –
This year should be a great year for the Southeastern University Fire baseball team. 2020 ruined a lot of good things and the Fire feel they were victims as well. They started the season 26-1 before Covid-19 cancelled their season back on March 13. This was also in the midst of a program record 25 game winning streak Southeastern was riding. The pitching and hitting both seemed to combine to power through the league as they ended in first place when the season was cancelled. Now with the season slated to start on January 29, they look to finish what they started just last year.
The key to winning a major part of your scheduled games and to make a deep playoff run is to have great pitching. The numbers this pitching staff was putting together was amazing compared to many other teams in the league. An impressive team ERA of 3.43 was led by big stars like Bryce Mulcahy who won pitcher of the week back on February 17. This was following a one hit, eleven strikeout performance in his complete game effort against Thomas University on February 14. Performances like this defined last season and stretching these numbers over the span of a complete season would have been fun to watch.
If you’re thinking this team won solely on the backs of this pitching staff, you would be mistaken. Outfielder Zach Cornell had a very hot start to the year ending with a .519 batting average with 10 homeruns and 44 runs batted in. He and the rest of the offense went on to have an almost unbelievable combined OPS of 1.208 and a team batting average of .388. To say this team was playoff bound from the jump would be understated, but this offense exceeded expectations by a large mark. They jumped .2 points in the OPS category from 2019 and jumped 40 points in batting average which was not something Coach Adrian Dinkel could have expected to see.
Coach Dinkel has been a program changing head coach for the Fire since taking over back in 2017. In just his first four seasons, the Fire have broken the school record twice for wins in a season, a Sun Conference Tournament title (2017), an NAIA World Series title (2018), and a Sun Conference Regular Season Championship (2019). The World Series title was the first in school history and that showed the program Dinkel knows what he is doing. All signs lead to many championships in the future as long as he is there.
The great thing about this team is a lot of their players are returning so numbers like these should be similar in 2021. For many guys this season will be their last and the hope is to be drafted by an MLB team in July. This means there might be some extra effort put into the season and that’s scary when you are talking about a team already as a league favorite to win it all again this year. There are still some players from the 2018 team that helped win the schools first ever NAIA World Series title and the goal could be nothing short of that this year.
