Lakers finding form in early season

Baseball is in full swing and the Kalispell Lakers are doing their fair share of swinging on their opponents on the scoreboard. After a tough start to the spring, considering the weather we have had, we’re getting some great weather for firing up the grill for burgers and hot dogs and enjoying Lakers baseball. I spoke to the Lakers’ AA team skipper Ryan Malmin as we talked about the team and the season so far.

Nach on Sports: What kind of start have you and your team gotten off to in the early part of the season?

Ryan Malmin: It’s been a little bit of a slower start then we kind of anticipated. We are really trying to see the consistency that we want in kids.

This past weekend at our Canadian Days tournament was the first time we had our full roster since the opening weekend due to different events for kids throughout the last four or five weeks. Now that we’ve got our full roster back we’re healthy. This will be the first full week we have had our full roster and we’re excited to move forward from here.

NOS: What’s it like to be able to play teams from north of the border?

RM: We’ve have had great games with Calgary over the years and a great opportunity for us to be able to play them, not only in the round robin part of it, but also the championship. So, it’s fun to play teams that are fundamentally sound and puts pressure on us to be better.

NOS: How has the pitching been so far on your team?

RM: I think we’re pretty much set on what we want to do. I think we have definitive starters, we have guys that are going to fit that early to middle relief role and we have two guys that potentially can close.

So, it will be great to see Dawson Smith, Sam Elliot and Drew Scherrer be our starters. You have guys like Brady Peiffer and Jonas Nyman in the middle relief role and if we get to the sixth and seventh innings, I think we’ve got two kids in Johan Freudenberg and Torin Bowden that can shut the door for us. We like how we’ve got definitive roles for guys and I think that is going to benefit us tremendously.

NOS: What does it take to take to develop pitches as a starter? Is it having two or more pitches?

RM: For us it’s got to be all about command. If you can’t locate your first or second pitch you can’t move on to the third pitch until those first two are in command. Bottom line is they have command and by command for us we say six to seven out of ten pitches has to be a strike location in a certain spot for them to move on to the next pitch.

NOS: Thoughts on the Memorial Day series against the Glacier Twins?

RM: That’s always a great opportunity. Back in the day, that used to be a big time rivalry, you know when you have the conference games and such. We took a year or two hiatus from playing each other and last year we decided, ‘Lets get this back because it’s a fan favorite.’ We get good crowds and the kids get into it and that it’s fun to play and have that rivalry mentality.

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Anthony Nachreiner is the host of The Nach on Sports Show, Northwest Montana’s only sports talk show, which airs every weekday from 3-5 p.m. on 600 AM KGEZ and 96.5 FM.