Eagles have great expectations

Just as Major League baseball teams are wrapping up spring training, the Sauk Prairie Eagles will be heading south for hopefully some spring training work of their own.  For the first time since 2018, Sauk Prairie’s baseball team will be heading to Florida to open its season. The Eagles travel to Tampa to play three teams from Minnesota — Osseo, Elk River and Apple Valley — March 26-28, which will count as part of their 24-game regular season schedule. Sauk Prairie manager Darin Pape, who is beginning his eighth season, chuckled when he remembered the last time the Eagles opened the season down South.  “We went in 2018 and didn’t get outside when we got back for two weeks,” Pape recalled. “My son still hasn’t forgiven me. He pitched in 80-degree weather against a tough Ohio school. Then we couldn’t get back outside for two weeks later when we played in 35-degree weather in DeForest and were all freezing. “All the momentum we thought we made in Florida and were playing really good baseball, then we come back to Wisconsin and the weather stunk.” Getting off to a hot start is important to the Eagles, who are picked to finish fourth in the new Badger Small Conference. Last spring was a nightmare when Sauk Prairie began the season 0-8, including a forfeited game. But the Eagles won seven of their next eight games and ended the season winning five of their last six games.  Sauk Prairie won its first regional title since 2016 and then capped its season with a 4-0 loss to Badger West Conference champion Reedsburg in a WIAA Division 2 sectional semifinal. That evened the Eagles record at 13-13, which included a 6-9 mark in conference play and a tie for fifth place. Pape said that remarkable turnaround will provide fuel to the fire for the Eagles’ aspirations this season. “After the adversity our kids went through last year to start the season, they jelled and just figured it out and had a great run at the end of the season,” Pape said. “Some of the guys returning this year know we don’t want to start the same way this year. That experience last year will help propel them to compete really, hard from the get-go.” Five players who started in the sectional semifinal game against Reedsburg — senior designated hitter/infielder Brason Ballweg, senior catcher Jackson Breunig, junior right fielder Boden Frosch, sophomore shortstop Marty Hanna, and left-handed starting pitcher Austin Pagel — form a solid returning nucleus. Pape welcomes back six pitchers, who accounted for 11 of the team’s 13 victories and 73% of its innings pitched last season.  Leading the way will be a pair of aces who earned All-Badger West Conference honorable mention recognition in 2023. Pagel finished with a 4-2 record in a team-high 52 1/3 innings with 52 strikeouts. He appeared in 14 games with nine starts and posted a sensational 0.94 earned run average. He threw six innings of a combined no-hitter in a regional final win over Mauston. Brason Ballweg, a left-hander, is also expected to form a solid one-two punch with Pagel in the starting rotation after finishing with a 4-2 record and a 3.53 earned run average in 39 2/3 innings with 38 strikeouts.  “Those two are inning eaters for us,” Pape said. “They are solid competitors who will give you a good start every time. They give up few free passes and are rock solid starters for us. They both will also play some outfield and first base.” Jackson Breunig (1-1, 4.80), Frosch (2-0, 3.41), Hanna and senior Mason Kaufman will also provide depth. Pagel and Ballweg, who is also an all-conference linebacker in football and wrestler, are the team’s leading returning hitters. Pagel, who batted leadoff, hit .247, shared the team lead with 18 runs scored, and stole 12 bases.  Ballweg, who batted second in the sectional semifinal game, was second on the team with a .329 batting average and 23 base hits with 11 stolen bases. The Eagles should follow a similar formula success this season, relying on pitching and defense. “We return our starting shortstop, Marty Hanna, who started the season on JV and came on late,” Pape said. “He didn’t pitch much last year, but he will also be part of our three-headed monster starting games. “Junior Boden Frosch is our center fielder. He covers a lot of ground and is an all-conference caliber defender and was an all-conference receiver in football. He also pitched last year.” Another two-way player will be senior Jackson Breunig, a right-handed pitcher and infielder. “He played some first base and caught our sectional semifinal game last year,” Pape said of Breunig. “He pitched some pretty important innings for us, too.” Pape said that senior Mason Kaufman is a utility guy who will play a variety of positions for the Eagles along with senior infielder Evan Tucker. Entering the pre-season, one major question mark was who will handle the catching duties following the graduation of Michael Pipitone, the Eagles’ lone first-team all-conference selection last season. Early on, junior Kade Kinney and sophomore Bryan Breunig were competing for the position.  But Pape said a new rule change involving player communication equipment will have an impact on catchers this season. One-way electronic communication devices are permissible from the dugout to the catcher while the team is on defense for the purpose of calling pitches. When using the electronic communication device, the coach cannot be outside the dugout/bench area. “That takes a little bit of the guess work out of it,” Pape said of calling pitches. “We purchased a device which has a receiver that can be attached to the back strap of the catcher. It is one-way. It is only communication for the catcher. It was WIAA and NFHS approved. I’m curious to how many programs will use it.”   Eagles excited  for new league  Madison Edgewood is predicted to finish first with Reedsburg and Mount Horeb also in the mix when the Badger Small Conference makes its debut this season. But Pape, who is in his 25th season with the program and will coach the WBCA South All-Star team in June, said the new look league has a lot of question marks. “That’s the great unknown,” he said. “We’ve done some flipping and flopping from Badger North and South to Badger East and West to Badger Large and Small. But I like getting back to the old format where we play a team in our conference twice.” “Reedsburg is bringing back a solid core and has really good pitching coming back plus an all-conference shortstop (Winston Alonso), who was a freshman last year. Edgewood will be good. Mount Horeb has improved a lot, and Baraboo will be good, too. We also add McFar-land and Stoughton to the league. I’m not totally sure how things are going to shake out.” The league will also include two perennial solid programs in Baraboo and Portage. Regardless, the Eagles plan to follow the formula that proved to be successful down the stretch last season. “Our defense will be solid up the middle with our pitching depth, our starting shortstop and starting center fielder who are returning players who are super solid,” Pape said. “We will have lots of younger guys competing for playing time. “We have a solid core coming back with some athletic kids to fill in the spots we don’t know about yet. We should play solid defense and with our pitching, we just have to find some ways to score some runs.”