Published: September 03, 2008 06:26 pm            

Latta still looking to improve

Latta — For the first time in five years, the Latta Panthers had a “Brown-out” heading into their 2008 fall baseball season.

As a junior in the spring of 2005, Kolbie Brown was a key member of Latta’s last state championship team in the spring of the 2005 and graduated with All-State honors in the spring of 2006. This spring, younger brother Dalton — a starter at shortstop as a freshman on the 2005 spring squad and the leader of four straight Latta state tournament clubs (fall and spring) the past two years — moved on after also being named to the small-school All-State team as a senior.

Dalton Brown, who, like his brother, was one of the area’s top pitchers in addition to being among the best at his position throughout his career, was one of four seniors who graduated off the 2007-2008 Panthers. His departure left veteran Latta coach Eddie Collins with holes to fill defensively and at the top of his pitching rotation, and things became even more critical when versatile junior Wacey Henderson was sidelined after damaging cartilage in his rib cage swinging at a pitch during a game at Rock Creek in the first week of the season.

“Wacey kind of solidifies our order,” Collins said of Henderson, who played third base and first base, hit third or fourth in the lineup and was the Panthers’ No. 2 starting pitcher behind fellow junior Tyler Reeves. “It’s hard to know if or when he’ll be back. Worst case scenario, he won’t be back, next best would be he could throw and play defense and not swing the bat, and the best case scenario is he’ll be back at 100 percent.

“He’s been out about 10 days, and he was feeling a lot better (late last week),” Collins said. “Right now, we’re flip-flopping Tyler, (senior) Mike Hood and (junior catcher) Ryan Stoup in the 3-4-5 spots. It’s kind of hit-and-miss right now. We just look at who’s pitching and see what we can work out.”

Even with Henderson in the line-up, the Panthers — ranked No. 5 in Class A — faced a tough road this fall. Their schedule is, as usual, one of the strongest in the state, and they struggled through the first two weeks of the season.

Latta climbed above the .500 mark (at 4-3) with an 8-0 victory over Tupelo Thursday in the first round of the Roff Fall Baseball Tournament and lost to Class A No. 1 Silo for the right to meet either Class B No. 1 Roff or 8-1 Soper in Saturday’s championship game. This week, the Panthers host old rival Dale (No. 2 in Class A and a team that has already beaten them twice this season), Rock Creek, Ripley, Stuart, Boswell and area contenders Stonewall and Vanoss in their own tournament Thursday through Saturday at Collins Field.

The tournament begins at 12:30 p.m. Thursday with Latta facing Boswell, then Rock Creek and Stonewall will meet at 2:30 p.m. The first round concludes with Dale-Ripley at 5 p.m. and Vanoss-Stuart at 7 p.m. Saturday’s championship game will begin at 5 p.m.

“Vanoss is a lot better this year, Dale is always going to be good, and Stonewall’s going to be hard to beat with (junior ace Josh Scribner) on the mound,” Collins said when asked about the strength of this year’s tournament. “It might not be as good a field as it has been in the past, but you don’t look for anybody to walk through it.”

Collins, who has finished first or second in his class 19 times in his 28 years at Latta, said his schedule should help his team mature over the next few weeks, adding that, if Henderson returns to the lineup at some point, the Panthers should be a tougher club for having been forced to play without him.

“We still think if we put some things together and things work out with injuries, we have a chance to be pretty good by the end of the year,” Collins said. “Throwing younger guys out there right now gives them a chance to get better. Learning on the fly isn’t always the best policy. We have a lot of good teams on our schedule, so I don’t know how our record will be by the end of the season, and that’s what determines playoff rankings.

“What you want is to get better as a baseball team so that if (Henderson) does come back, he adds to that,” he said. “We just need to improve in every other phase of the game so that if he does come back, we’ll be even better. We’ll either get better or wish we had.”

While Henderson is sidelined, Latta will rely heavily on Reeves — one of the area’s top pitchers since he went 7-2 as a freshman in the spring of 2007 — and sophomore Dylan Tinkler, who battled clean-up for the Panthers for a good portion of the spring season and has taken over Brown’s old spot at shortstop. Henderson’s injury could also force Collins to try Tinkler on the mound — something he has already done on a limited basis.

“Dylan came in in the seventh inning the other day against Dale (in a 7-0 road loss) and looked real good,” Collins said. “Dylan has done well at shortstop. The difference between him and Dalton is that when Dalton was a sophomore, we used him a lot on the mound. Dylan’s probably pushing 6-2 and he’s still growing. He’s just a different kind of player.

“He has a chance to be a pretty good pitcher — he’s got some pop and good break on his offspeed pitches,” he added. “Dylan has a lot of range, and his upside is pretty big now. The only problem with him pitching is that with Wacey’s injury, it hurts our defense when we take (Tinkler) off shortstop.”

Reeves immediately joined Dalton Brown atop Latta’s rotation when he joined the varsity squad in the fall of 2006, and he has been to four straight state tournaments in his first two years — although never past the first round. He took a tough 3-2 loss to Dale in the Panthers’ opening-round contest this spring, and he is 2-0 so far this fall despite missing one start due to the weather and another when the final game of a pick-up three-way at Olive (where Collins’ oldest son, Derek, is the head coach) was called off last weekend.

“Tyler was a little erratic in his first start (a win over Oktaha), then we had the rain the next week and went to Rock Creek, and I didn’t want to bring him back right then,” Collins explained. “We were going to use him in the second game last Friday, and that’s didn’t work out. I didn’t want to throw him against Dale, because we have them on the schedule later, they’re in our tournament, and we could see them in the playoffs.”

Henderson’s injury has also made the return of Hood — the team’s No. 3 starter last fall but out this spring with a shoulder injury — even more important. Hood is also part of an outfield rotation with Reeves, Dalton Lewis and junior leadoff hitter Seyth Roebuck, and he will hit in the middle of the batting order.

“Mike has looked pretty good so far — he only gave up one earned run in five innings against Dale,” Collins said. “At times, he looks better than he was last fall. Velocity is probably the last thing I look at. His command and location have been pretty good at times.”

Roebuck was Latta’s offensive sparkplug this spring, supplying a left-handed bat and the ability to hit line drives to all fields.

“He runs well, he’s got a pretty good arm in the outfield, and offensively he’s got a lot he can do,” Collins said of Roebuck. “He just has to be consistent.”

Sophomore Reed Johnson is another Panther who came into varsity baseball amid high expectations, and, despite an up-and-down first year, he improved steadily during the spring, both in the field and on the mound.

“Younger kids can have a good day and you set a bar for them to try to be that good all the time,” Collins said. “The thing you look for is to build some consistency in a positive way. Reed still has a lot of growing and maturing to do, but he’ll have moments where you think he’ll hit 15 or 20 home runs (in a season).

“When he gets physically stronger, I think he has a chance to be exceptional,” he added. “He’s not going to blow people away on the mound right now, and he’s learning to throw to spots and change speeds. It’s all about being able to take the next step, and we’re putting a lot of pressure on him. We need him to be good, and it’s the same for a lot of other kids if we’re going to have a chance to be a good ballclub.”

Like Reeves, Johnson and Tinkler, Stoup has never missed the state tournament as a varsity player, and he should be another key to Latta’s success this fall.

“What we have to have out of Ryan is consistency offensively and defensively,” Collins said. “I think he has the tools to be a pretty good catcher, and he’s made some strides as a hitter, but he’s in the same boat as the rest of them.”

That “boat” is inconsistency, which Collins said is probably a product of a schedule that has been shredded by rain this month.

“We just haven’t had anybody take off offensively,” Collins said. “When we start to take off and put some games together, it will make a lot of difference. We just haven’t had one or two people get on a streak at the plate.

“When you spend more time inside than outside, it’s hard to get better, and other than the Dale Tournament (the first week of the season), we haven’t played on consecutive days all season,” he noted. “And we’re one of those teams that has to do a lot of things right to win.”

        

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