Another area of improvement the Knoxville Baseball Squad is looking at this summer is hitting and getting on base. Last season the Panthers as a team hit just .270 and struck out the most times of any team in the South Central Conference, and drew only 166 walks. First year Coach Turner Devore tells KRLS Sports his team needs to practice more patience, but go after pitches early in the count if they are in the strike zone.

Devore:
“If they are not throwing us good pitches we need to take them and get on base, we need to flip the lineup faster than we did last year. We had Colton Jones as the leadoff hitter last year and sometimes we wasn’t getting up for his second at bat until the fourth inning when our opponents were getting their leadoff batter back up in the second and third innings, so we need to flip the line up to score more runs.”

One glaring stat that Knoxville would like to avoid this season is the at bats category. Last season, Knoxville had 1,026 at bats and the Panthers opponents had 1,349. Devore adds not allowing the opponents to turn over the lineup as much is one key to having success this summer. The Panthers are scheduled to open at Bondurant-Farrar on June 16th.