In The Cage: UPG Baseball Preseason Rundown

As UPG Baseball starts off their 2018 season, the team faces a variety of challenges as well as new talent. Coming off their third-place conference finish last year, the Bobcats kicked off their first few games at the RussMatt Invitational at the start of the month. Before they made the trip down to Florida, I was able to speak with Mike Spadafore about preseason, and the future of the 2018 season.

Spadafore, now in his 4^th year on the team, has seen potential during this year’s preseason. “The freshmen, who we’re relying on a lot are looking good.” With 12 newcomers including 9 freshman and 3 transfers, team has plenty of new talent to put on display in the following weeks. “This is the most amount of new players I’ve ever heard of.” The transfer players are coming in from division 3 school Immaculata and, as Spadafore was excited to claim, division 1 schools UMBC and Miami Dayton.

This in conjunction with the large lot of freshman makes for a healthy amount of competition within the team. “It’s all good competition. We all want to be able to start. I started a lot of games last year, and now I have to work harder to do that. It’s bringing out the best in the players, and that brings out the best in the team.” The new talent is pushing upperclassmen like Spadafore to work harder. “It’s a good problem to have. It’s a lot of hard work, it always is, but of course it’s all worth it. If I get to see our program win the AMCC, then it’s all worth it.