May 27, 2020 at 11:31 a.m.
The lost season: RHS baseball
The lost season: RHS baseball
Abbreviated seasons have not done the Rhinelander High School baseball team many favors over the past couple of springs. With the 2018 and 2019 campaigns shortened to basically four-to-five week jaunts due to late-arriving springs, the Hodags have scuffled around .500 each of the last two years.
This was looking to be a more normal spring, weather-wise, but then COVID-19 stepped in, wiping out the season in its entirety.
Though only a handful of starters who played a role on either of those squads were back, coach Joe Waksmonski was eager to see what this year's team could have done.
"I thought they were ready for a breakout year," the 14th-year skipper of the Hodags said.
Here are five storylines that we would have followed this spring.
Young arms
If the Hodags were going to be competitive in the Great Northern Conference this season, they would have needed a young and relatively unproven pitching staff to step up.
Seniors carried the bulk of the pitching responsibility last year. Josh Randolph, Bryce Schickert, Liam Stevens and Martin Hoger logged 102 2/3 innings on the mound last spring and combined for an 8-7 record with three saves.
Junior Isaac Bixby has the most varsity experience of those pitchers returning, going 2-2 last spring with a 6.33 ERA and 10 strikeouts over 21 innings.
He was 2-1 with a 1.40 ERA during the summer in 15 innings of work with the Rhinelander Post 7 American Legion baseball team.
Bixby did not see a ton of innings last summer for the Rebels, partly because last year's seniors were still in the pitching rotation and partly because he split time playing at the legion and Babe Ruth levels.
The pitching staff for this spring would have likely been chock-full of underclassmen. Junior Walker Hartman, who spent most of his time behind the plate as a freshman and a sophomore, proved effective in the summer on the opposite end of the battery.
His 29 innings pitched for the Rebels were the second most on the squad and he went 2-2 with a 3.86 ERA.
Jacob Dreifuerst and Teagan Guckenberg were the only seniors on the roster who saw varsity innings at either the high school or legion level last year. Otherwise, the Hodags were going to be looking to guys who primarily pitched at the JV and/or Babe Ruth levels last year, including Tim Fox, Quinn Lamers, Joe Schneider and Ryan Jamison.
"This year was going to be a big year, developmental wise for those pitchers," Waksmonski said. "It's unfortunate now that we've lost a spring and summer season now for them to develop. I know they are still working hard. They're still getting together and playing catch and doing the things that they need to do to get ready for next year. It's unfortunate that they can't bring what they've learned and the experience they've gained in the offseason to any games this year - hopefully in July we can see some of it."
Quality bats
The Hodags were also set to lose a number of productive bats in their lineup between Hoger, Randolph, Stevens and Schickert. The four combined to hit .304 with three home runs and 40 RBIs last spring, and Hoger followed with a .478 season with 12 RBIs for the Rebels last summer.
Still, Waksmonski felt the team had plenty of offensive weapons coming back, starting with senior Danny Zuiker, who led the team with a .353 average last spring, and contributed seven RBIs. Another senior, Abe Laggis - back after playing club hockey in Helena, Montana over the winter - hit .289 last year. Hartman and senior Payton Johnson both hit .256 last spring.
The offensive production went up for a number of those players last summer. Hartman and Laggis both hit .364 for the Rebels. Guckenberg returned after taking last spring off and hit .361 and Dreifuerst, a power-hitting righty, saw plenty of at-bats, hitting .310 with a home run and a team-high 15 RBIs in legion play.
"We had some seniors in the middle of our lineup that were going to be our big bats," Waksmonski said. "Along the same lines we have some juniors that can put together some good, quality at-bats. But for the seniors, we were looking for them to be the majority of our offense, from the top to the bottom.
"Last year, a bunch of those juniors were showing signs at times where they were going to really take over and then slumped. That's kind of the nature of the beast. I just felt that this year a lot of those seniors were really going to be ready to take off, offensively."
The seniors
The Hodags had six seniors who would have made an impact on this year's squad - Zuiker, Laggis, Johnson, Dreifuerst, Guckenberg and Alex Kubeny. Waksmonski had something to say about all of them.
"Danny is just someone, he just knows how to work an at-bat," Waksmonski said, noting that Zuiker would likely have been the team's leadoff hitter. "He went up there and his mind was just as sharp as his body and his swing. There are times where he was aggressive at the plate. He could jump on any pitch, especially that first at-bat."
"I was excited for Abe to come back and be that veteran presence for us, knowing where he was at this offseason," Waksmonski said, noting he was looking forward to utilizing Laggis' speed in the bunt game and on the base paths. "He learned a great deal not only about his sport of hockey, but just being a great teammate and great person too.
"When you look at the middle of our lineup, this year it would have been Jacob Dreifuerst and Payton Johnson. Jacob has shown pop. He showed it last year toward the end of the spring and throughout the summer in legion. I was really looking forward to Payton Johnson. The couple of times he was in open gym, we had talked just before the end of legion about some of the swing adjustments I wanted to see him make and I saw him make them in open gym and his swing looked really, really good. He was swinging with power. I was really excited about the year he was going to bring to the plate.
"Teagan, he's a kid that likes to live in the weight room. His swing looked really good, really strong. He swings the hardest on our team. The ball comes off his bat the hardest on our team. For someone who's on the shorter side, he's definitely strong. He's a strong kid and it was going to be really exciting to see what he was going to generate too at the top of the lineup right there.
"Kubeny, he was kind of our glue guy. He's a great guy to have on the team, keeps everyone loose. He's got some great stories. I think he would have been able to provide us some innings in the outfield. He's really good at tracking the ball. He's a good defender. At the plate, he's got a really good eye and he would have been able to contribute both offensively and defensively."
In the mix?
The Hodags haven't won a Great Northern Conference title since 2012, and would not have been favored to do so this year, especially considering that Antigo had a number of pieces back from the team that won the WIAA Division 2 state title last spring.
But Antigo did not even win the GNC last year. Medford, which knocked Rhinelander out of the playoffs a year ago, did. Plus Mosinee was due to have some dangerous pieces in its lineup back with Trey Fitzgerald and Max Beste.
Still, Waksmonski felt his team was capable of going toe-to-toe with any team in the GNC.
"I thought we could have been in the mix, right at the top - whether it was with an Antigo or Medford," he said. I thought, offensively, we could match up with those teams. It was just our inexperience that we had going into the year on the pitching mound where maybe you would give the edge to some of those other teams. Both Antigo and Medford had some top-of-the-line pitchers coming back. Mosinee always seems to have one or two pitchers that are coming back and one or two that are coming up.
"I thought, overall as a conference, there was really going to be some high-quality pitching in our conference this year. For us, pitching-wise, maybe we didn't match up with some of the top-end pitchers, but I thought we would more than hold our own with them."
What's next?
In terms of the greater Rhinelander baseball program, a whole spring and summer of activity has been reduced to a two-week mini season in July.
In addition to the loss of the spring high school season, there will probably not be any summer baseball either, with the local American Legion season canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Babe Ruth to follow suit, according to an email received by the River News late Wednesday.
With the state's Safer at Home order currently lifted, the prospects of some baseball in July seem realistic. The Hodags would practice during the first two weeks of the month, and then play four games between July 13 and 15 - including two against Antigo.
"We'll see them in July and I know, when we get to that point in July, there are going to be a lot of kids that are going to be coming back from next year's team that will be at practice," Waksmonski said, noting that practices would likely be more game-like than in the past due to the limited time the teams will have. "You're always worried in the summertime, there's always other sports going on and vacations and jobs and whatnot, but I feel really good about the guys we have coming back. Whatever we have for that month, they're going to be there. They're going to be involved and they're going to be giving their best effort."
As for next year, many of the pitchers who would have seen action this year as sophomores and juniors will be juniors and seniors, however the team will have holes to fill in the lineup, as well as in the outfield and the right side of the infield with the graduation of this year's senior class.
Still, Waksmonski said he was encouraged by the amount of work the team was putting in this offseason and hopes that will carry over into the abbreviated summer schedule and into next offseason.
"The great sign that I'm seeing are guys are still getting together, the guys that are going to be around next year," he said. "There are some kids taking some leadership roles and trying to make sure kids are still getting together, getting their swings in. That's always good to see. Once school starts to wind down here at the end of the month, I'm sure a lot of guys will be itching to do a little bit more, whether it's on the field or in the batting cages, but a lot of that's going to depend on what the school's going to let us do and what the WIAA's going to let us do with them."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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