June 26, 2019 at 12:54 p.m.
Team Review: RHS baseball
Hodags near .500 in another condensed season
Team Review: RHS baseball
Rather, once again, the Hodags' most stubborn foe was Old Man Winter. His unwillingness to leave the Northwoods compacted the team's season into a one-month sprint for the second straight season.
This spring's results mirrored last year's for RHS - a near .500 record, a middle of the pack finish in the Great Northern Conference and another second-round exit in the WIAA playoffs.
"I feel bad the most for our seniors because they really didn't get to experience a true varsity season where you could play single games," Waksmonski said earlier this month during the team's banquet. "They had to play two consecutive seasons of trying to scrunch a whole season into a month. It can be a grind on them and not as enjoyable if you could play over two months. It is what it is and we did the best we could."
Those seniors, a class of five strong, were leaders both offensively and defensively for the Hodags this year as Rhinelander went 10-9 overall and an even 6-6 in the Great Northern Conference.
Here are five storylines from the recently completed season.
Weather woes
Rhinelander was able to play and sweep a season-opening non-conference doubleheader from Notre Dame Academy in Green Bay April 6, but didn't get on the field again until April 23 thanks to another mid-April snowstorm and the unplayable field that resulted.
By then the set-up to the season mirrored the 2018 campaign - all of Rhinelander's conference games were rescheduled as doubleheaders. In fact, of Rhinelander's 17-game regular-season slate, only three times did Rhinelander play once in a day.
That produced some curious results. Rhinelander split a doubleheader from eventual GNC-champion Medford and was rallying to earn a sweep in that twinbill until darkness caused the second game to be called with the Hodags trailing by a run. The Hodags also split a doubleheader from Mosinee, which finished third in the GNC.
On the other side of the coin, the Hodags gave Tomahawk their lone win in GNC play this season and split a doubleheader with Northland Pines. It took a walkoff walk in Game 1 for the Hodags to avoid a sweep in that contest.
Part of the reason was that Rhinelander's pitching depth was tested. Seniors Bryce Schickert and Josh Randolph were both second-team All-GNC selections but because the Hodags had to play so many games in a short period of time, those two weren't always available to throw.
"They carried us this year and I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, if we can play a regular spring season, we would have been able to ride Josh and Bryce a little bit more, we would have had a couple more wins. I'll go to my grave saying that," Waksmonski said.
Playoff upset
Those two arms helped carry Rhinelander to a playoff win over Mosinee, which was extra satisfying considering that Mosinee knocked off Rhinelander in the regional semifinal round last year en route to a Division 2 state tournament berth.
This time around, in a meeting down in Mosinee, Rhinelander scored three times in the first inning and were able to hold on for a 3-1 win. Schickert struck out seven over 5 2/3 innings and Randolph retired four straight batters against the GNC's second-best hitting team to earn the save.
Randolph and Schickert pitched well again in the regional semifinal contest against Medford May 28, but the Hodags couldn't get any offense going against GNC player of the year Cade Alexander, who pitched a complete-game two-hitter in Medford 3-0 victory.
Stately competition
Rhinelander took on some strong teams throughout the season, playing three games against teams that eventually won it all at the WIAA state baseball tournament down in Appleton.
The Hodags were swept by Antigo in the team's GNC doubleheader May 10 down in Antigo. After losing the first game 10-0, Rhinelander was up until the sixth inning of Game 2 when Antigo rallied to take a 8-4 win.
Late-inning rallies became the hallmark of Antigo's tournament run as the Red Robins got hot and eventually won the Division 2 title.
Ten days after playing Antigo twice, the Hodags faced Stratford at Stafford Field, losing 6-5. Stratford went on to win the Division 3 championship.
After the Stratford loss, a prophetic Waksmonski illustrated the makeup of championship ball clubs.
"I thought it was a very well played high school baseball game, very competitive. Both teams, you know had their moments to take the game," he said. "Stratford ultimately made the plays at the end. We had plenty of chances but we just made too many mistakes in some clutch and critical situations."
By the numbers
Rhinelander's production both at the plate and in the field was down from last season, but the team was better on the mound, which helped to balance the end result between the seasons.
Rhinelander hit .279 this spring, 21 points lower than in 2018 and its fielding percentage dropped from .950 last year to .924 this year. But Rhinelander's team ERA was more than a run per game better than last year at 3.54 compared to 4.61 a season ago.
Much of that success could be attributed to the 1-2 pitching punch of Randolph and Stevens, who combined to throw more than 52 percent of the team's innings this spring. Randolph made nine appearances, going 3-3 with three saves and a 1.53 ERA. Schickert was 3-1 with a save in eight outings and had a 2.20 ERA. The two combined to strike out 68 batters - 31 more than the rest of the staff put together.
Offensively, junior Danny Zuiker led the way at the plate with a .353 batting average. Behind him came four seniors with plenty of pop. Martin Hoger hit .321 with seven RBIs, Schickert hit .310 with a home run and 11 RBIs, Josh Randolph hit .296 with two homers and 17 driven in, and Liam Stevens had a team-best nine extra base hits as he hit .291 with 15 RBIs.
What's next
With the graduation of Schickert, Randolph, Hoger, Stevens and Eric Grulke, Rhinelander will lose four quality pitching arms and plenty of production from the middle of its order. What will be left is a relatively young squad for 2020.
The team is slated to return five seniors-to-be who saw time on varsity this year, led by Zuiker and regular starters in the outfield Abe Laggis and Payton Johnson.
Power-hitting righty Jacob Dreifuerst - whose only hit in five varsity at-bats this spring was a home run - will be back along with Alex Kubeny.
Behind that, it will be a load of returning juniors including everyday catcher Walker Hartman. Isaac Bixby, Tim Fox and Quinn Lamers - who missed virtually all of the spring with a hand injury suffered after being hit by a pitch in the Notre Dame doubleheader -round out the list of returning varsity players.
It will likely be on those juniors to handle the bulk of the pitching duties next spring. Dreifuerst is the only one of the incoming seniors who has seen any time on the rubber this spring with the Hodags or this summer with the Rhinelander Post 7 Rebels.
Bixby, who has yet to pitch for the Rebels this summer while splitting time with Rhinelander's Babe Ruth program, was 2-2 with a 6.33 ERA in 21 innings of work for the Hodags this spring.
Waksmonski sees optimism, noting that this year's senior class was not highly touted at the start of the year but developed into the backbone of the squad. He hopes the same can be said for next year's upperclassmen.
"The message to the younger guys is there's lots of work to be done, lots of improvement to be made and we just have to put the work in day by day," he said.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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