Summer Could Be A Busy Time For Iowa's Baseball Team
Rick Heller’s message to the Iowa baseball team once the season was canceled was simple — stay in shape.
At some point, there will be baseball again. And most of the Hawkeyes figure to be doing something this summer.
Some of the seniors will be candidates for Major League Baseball’s draft, although when it will take place, and how many rounds it will go, is yet to be determined.
Many of the other players are scheduled for summer leagues, provided they open for play in June.
If anything, there will be more open competition for roster spots in those leagues.
“That’s interesting, because depending on how this goes, and let’s say the summer leagues do play, they’re going to be booming, because virtually every kid is going to play, where the trend the last three or four years was leave a lot of guys home, take summer school, train, get stronger, recuperate from the season, and then really start ramping it up heading into fall ball, especially with the pitchers who have logged a lot of innings,” Heller said last week. “Now, everybody is going to be looking for a place to play. We’re getting bombarded with emails from summer leagues now — they’ve expanded rosters, they’ve done things to try to make it better for the guys who are coming out.”
The Cape Cod League has said it has not made a decision on a 2020 season, nor has the Northwoods League that consists of teams in the Midwest. The Prospect League, another league of Midwest teams, is also planning on a mid-June opening.
Heller said many of his position players have found teams, but pitchers may look at the summer differently than in the past.
“A lot of our younger guys had been placed,” Heller said. “The majority of our younger guys have been placed already. But we generally hold back a lot of our rotation guys, guys who would get 50-plus innings in the spring, and then make a decision on them. Some guys may only pitch half of a season and come back and train. Some guys may just stay here and train and recover. All of those guys may be looking for a place to play.”
Heller said the biggest concern right now for players is finding batting cages. Iowa’s facilities are shut down indefinitely.
“The hitters are the ones who have really struggled,” he said. “All of the facilities have locked down, and trying to find a cage that’s adequate enough to do a good hitting routine, that’s where our guys are struggling. I wish we could have a system where guys could come into the cages and hit at certain times, with limited numbers. But that’s not where we’re at.”
College teams have a fall season for workouts, games and scrimmages. Heller said playing an expanded fall season to make up for the lost spring season doesn’t make sense.
“That might sound like a good answer, but it’s really messy too,” he said. “There has been some (scuttlebutt) about playing a fall season. That’s just not feasible in my mind.
“We would have to start in early August, and have the players back in July to train. It would be a monumental task to do it right, to make sure your kids are healthy.”
Heller would like to see more practice time in the fall.
“I think a reprieve of having more time in the fall with the team you’re going to have in the spring makes total sense, because we lost so much training time,” he said.