First-year Edmonds Community College baseball coach Brad Ditter can’t quite put his finger on the reason for the Tritons’ strong start to the 2008 season.
Edmonds has opened league play with eight straight victories and is 20-2 overall.
“Right now we’re playing good baseball,” said Ditter, who was promoted to head coach after two years as an assistant coach. “I don’t know if there’s a particular style that we’re playing. I don’t know if that’s the case. I think we’re just playing tough. I think we’re playing to our strengths and allowing kids to do what they’re good at.”
If there’s a word Ditter would use to describe the Tritons, it’s scrappy.
“We haven’t really blown out a whole lot of teams,” Ditter said. “We just play good enough to win.”
Don’t expect to see a lot of home runs or power from Edmonds as the team’s offensive focus is more oriented to small ball.
“We don’t have any power hitters,” said freshman infielder Kirby Young, a Lake Washington High School graduate. “We just like to steal, bunt, scrap and pull out wins in the end. … (Coach) wants us to be aggressive. That’s the way he was when he was a player.”
Ditter played at Edmonds in 2001-02 and won a Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NWAACC) championship under former coach Don Marbut, who is currently the head baseball coach at Washington State. Ditter was named the tournament MVP.
“My biggest thing is just playing hard,” said Ditter, who went on to play at New Mexico State University and was drafted by the Washington Nationals. “If kids are scared to fail, they’ll never succeed. We try to put the right kids in the right spots.”
The Edmonds coaching staff has four NWAACC titles either as coaches or players, and nine years of professional experience. Ditter played three seasons in the minor leagues.
Ditter’s promotion to head coach brought a sense of excitement to the baseball program, said sophomore third baseman Cameron Softli, an Eastlake graduate.
“Whenever you get a new coach, everybody is ready to go. Everybody is excited,” Softli said.
Softli also isn’t quite sure how to explain Edmonds’ early success but what he has seen among his teammates is a growing level of confidence.
“We don’t really get shook by anything,” he said. “Everybody is on the same page. Everybody is together. We’re all working towards one thing.”
Edmonds finished fourth in the North Division in 2007, just two games behind Everett. Only the top three teams advance to the postseason.
“It was a little disappointing,” Softli said. “It’s good to get back to up where we should be right now.”
But with a month and half of the regular season to go, Edmonds still has plenty of games ahead.
“We’ve got to stay aggressive and stay level-headed,” Young said. “We haven’t really accomplished that much. We have a lot more bigger and better things to come if we just stay grounded.”
Edmonds’ starting pitching has been one of its strengths, with four solid starters. Sophomores Tyler Rogstad (Inglemoor) and Tyler Rice (Gig Harbor) and freshmen Brandon Kizer (Marysville-Pilchuck) and Chris Dennis (Bothell) all have excelled on the mound.
“We’ve been fortunate enough not to make any changes in our rotation,” Ditter said. “We’ve had successful pitching.”
Two pitchers out of the bullpen, freshman Paris Shewey (Redmond) and sophomore Jordan Harrison (Gig Harbor), have provided key innings in relief of the starters.
“Those two have been absolute stoppers out of the bullpen,” Ditter said.
The Tritons have fared fairly well with the wet Northwest weather. Edmonds only has had a couple of games called on account of rain.
Regardless of the conditions outside, the players find something to work on.
“The work ethic has been really good so far,” Softli said. “Even on rainy days everybody is in here hitting and getting our stuff done. It’s helping us out a lot. We just have to keep it up.”
The Tritons will take all the help they can get. In the most recent NWAACC baseball poll, Edmonds was ranked sixth overall. Other North Division teams include Bellevue (second), Skagit Valley (fifth) and Everett (seventh). Bellevue defeated Skagit Valley in the championship game last season. The current top-ranked team is Columbia Basin.
“We play in the hardest division in the NWAACC,” Ditter said. “The rankings show four of the top teams in the North and they only take two (to the playoffs). So there are going to be a couple of teams that don’t get to play at the end of the year.”
The first place team earns an automatic berth to the playoffs, while the second and third place teams play off.
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