The condensed summer sports season is typically considered to be a blessing after the shutdowns of the spring. While student-athletes and coaches are excited to get the season underway, it won’t come without some unusual side effects. Notably, baseball pitching staffs will likely be thinned with a large number of games in a short amount of time. Pleasantville baseball coach Sheldon Card says that managing pitchers has been one of the more challenging things he’s had to think about, but careful planning should help ease concerns.

“The last two years, pitchers were maybe on pitch counts. This year, they’re maybe going to lower that pitch count, where we’re not going to get people fatigued right away. Just building what we would be doing at pitchers and catchers practices a couple times a week, now we’re doing as the season gets going. It might look a little different. Some weeks it might look like we don’t even know what we’re doing. But realistically, you’re keeping kids under a certain pitch count so maybe they can throw on a Monday and Friday, and the next week a Tuesday and Thursday. It’ll be interesting to see how all that works with the pitchers, just trying to keep everyone healthy and not overdoing anybody.”

The Trojans are expected to have a wealth of experience on the mound this year, which should help ease some of the concerns of depth. Pleasantville gets their season underway on June 15th at Van Meter.