Sanchez has positive outlook for Tech baseball

Last season, plenty of things went right for the Lynn Tech baseball team. The Tigers won the Commonwealth Athletic Conference championship. Joan Mota was named the CAC’s most valuable player. And the Tigers qualified for the state tournament, where they lost to conference rival North Shore Tech in the first round.Can Tech deliver an encore performance? Possibly. There are difficulties – Mota has graduated, as have the team’s No. 1 pitcher in 2008, Leury Peguero, and Jose Rios, whom coach Yuri Sanchez called “one of the top players in the league.” And Sanchez said the CAC is “always strong.” Yet, the coach said, “We’re going to be all right.”The team returns three seniors – third baseman Mikey Lara, pitcher/first baseman Ronnie Guzman, and outfielder Osvaldo Mercado. Other returning players include pitcher Mike Leone and middle infielders Eric Guerrero and Wilfredo Feliz.”We’re more experienced, more mature,” said Sanchez, who called his team “strong in the middle.”The coach anticipates a strong season at the plate from his team.”Most definitely, we’re going to hit and run the bases,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of guys who were big last year.”Sanchez praised Guzman’s performance at the plate last year. He is also looking for productive seasons on offense from Lara, Guerrero and catcher Randy Pimentel. And he doesn’t expect his team to let up on the basepaths.”We’re going to steal more bases than last year,” he said.On the mound, the team has lost a few of its top pitchers from last season. However, the coach noted that Leone “pitched a good job for us last year,” and that another player, Francisco Tolentino, can also pitch.”We’ll try different people who’ll go one or two innings to help the starters,” Sanchez added.The coach’s one concern is center field. The Tigers currently lack a center fielder, and Sanchez is trying to bring a JV player into that position.”It’s a very important position,” he said. “You want to be strong in the middle.”As for team numbers in general, the coach said that “a lot of freshmen showed up” for tryouts, and that there are over 20 players on the varsity. There seems to be an interest in baseball among younger students, as Sanchez noted that more JV players have turned out for tryouts than varsity players.On March 31, Tech will scrimmage Concord-Carlisle; the teams also scrimmaged last year. The regular season starts on April 4, when the team travels to Northeast for a tournament that also includes Mystic Valley. In the CAC, Sanchez anticipates strong seasons from Lawrence, North Shore and Northeast; he did say that Chelsea “was hurt a little bit last year.”NOTES: Tech may have revenge on its mind when it plays North Shore this year. The teams split a pair of regular-season games in 2008 before North Shore took the MIAA matchup. “I expected my team to win the game,” Sanchez said, “but they played better than us.” ? Sanchez, who is from El Cibao in the Dominican Republic, said that while the Dominican national team was “one of the best” in the World Baseball Classic, it did “not do the little things right.” He said that he watched a couple of the WBC games – “not much, not many” – and added that Venezuela has a “nice team. They might take it all the way.”