Alan Ready interviews for PSU head baseball coach position

University of Indianapolis assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Alan Ready interviewed Tuesday for the Pittsburg State head baseball coach position that recently became available upon the retirement of 22-year head man Steve Bever.

“The baseball program here at Pitt State is just a hidden gem,” Ready said. “I think there’s so much potential here. . . . It’s an opportunity to bring in some really quality people and give this program a shot in the arm so to speak. You can win here and you’re in a hotbed for baseball in the Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri area. There’s just no reason why this program shouldn’t be a contender year-in, year-out for a long time.”

Ready touched on where he would start building a college baseball program.

“You’re only as good as the person you run out there on the mound,” Ready said. “You can have the best offense in the league, you can score seven-plus runs per game but if you’re not pitching it and you’re not playing defense, that’s not going to help you when you’re getting beat 10-7, 12-10, so on and so forth. You’ve got to have a good solid pitching staff and they’ve got to be deep. You’ve got to have guys as insurance plans. Let’s say, your No. 1 and your No. 2 go down, you just can’t concede the season, you’ve got to have guys ready to roll right behind them. I build my programs around pitching.”

The UIndy Greyhounds (46-14) won their first regional title since 2000 on Sunday, defeating Rockhurst 9-6 in the Midwest Regional final.

Ready played on that 2000 squad and since he returned to his alma mater in 2007 as an assistant coach, he said that head coach Gary Vaught and his staff have emphasized using more of their nine full scholarships on pitchers and that pitching made the difference in the performance of the Greyhounds in 2012.

“We have six of them on the mound,” Ready said. “For the rest of our starting nine, position guys and our reserves, we’ve got three. I think it’s a feather in our cap toward our team offense and what we can do with some guys and teaching them how to become a tough out at the plate. Also, at the same time, you might be able to give a guy on the mound a slight jump in velocity but a lot of that being able to throw hard is God-given. We go out there and we get it.”

Pitching depth between UIndy and Rockhurst, for example, made a difference in the Midwest Regional, Ready said. Rockhurst used three pitchers, including starting pitcher Nick Lichtenberger, on both Saturday and Sunday; Lichtenberger started both games, 21-14 and 9-6 UIndy victories.

The Greyhounds have a staff ERA of 3.14. Staff ace Donovan Drake owns a 9-2 record with a 1.58 ERA, 99 strikeouts in 85.2 innings pitched; opponents are hitting .199 against Drake. Opponents have not given JaVaun West a trip to the loser’s circle this season, as West holds a 8-0 mark, 2.57 ERA and 65 strikeouts over 66.2 innings.

Phil Wheeler, sixth on the Greyhound staff with four starts, recently made national headlines and highlight reels when he tossed a no-hitter against Rockhurst in the semifinals of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament.

Other pitchers of note include Hugo Lalonde (6-4, 4.12 ERA), Alex Wood (6-1, 4.43), Brett Collins (3-1, 5.79), Patrick Kraft (3-0, 3.30), Chris Seefeldt (2-2, 4.12) and closer Chris Saroff (3-2, 2.60, 11 saves).

Meanwhile, other than staff ace Matt Stalcup and his 3.74 ERA, nobody on the Gorillas staff (15 players with at least one appearance) possessed an ERA below 4.00, resulting in a team ERA of 7.64.

On that note, Ready addressed what he sees as perhaps the biggest challenge to building a successful baseball program at Pitt State.

“I teach hitting,” Ready said. “I develop offense and team offense. But I recognize the importance of pitching and it seems like a couple of other schools in the conference seem to be the ones who get those frontline arms. That’s got to change. Those frontline guys need to be coming here, not to those other schools. Some of it may have to do with tradition. I’ll use Central Missouri as an example. They’ve been to the World Series three times out of the last five years.”

Ready emphasized the student in student-athlete Tuesday.

“Academics have got to be No. 1,” Ready said. “Yeah, it’s nice to be able to come here and play a sport for four years but to come here to just play a sport is the wrong reason to come to a school. You’ve got to pick a school for the education. It’s got to have the education program that you’re looking for. Everybody wants to play pro ball. Everybody wants to get to the big leagues in baseball but the reality of it is nobody can take that piece of paper away from you after four years and it’s going to become more important to your quality of life later on than four years of college baseball.”

Not a surprise given his background in computer information systems, Ready mentioned a software program when the alumni tracking question came up.

“I started using this program about 4 or 5 years ago called TEAMDesktop,” Ready said. “It has a lot of different segments to the program. One of the nice things is that it will track your alumni. It takes a kid from prospect, a high school prospect or a junior college prospect, all the way through signing a national letter of intent with your program, putting him on the roster, playing four years for your school and then what happens after.”

Ready started his interview with an inadvertent near-quote from Paul Simon.

“I go by Al,” he said. “If you see me in the hallway or whatever, I prefer you call me Al.”

Pitt State assistant coach Daniel Esposito closes out the three days of interviews today, 10:15 a.m. in the Balkans Room of the Overman Student Center. Pitt State chose Esposito, Ready and Central Missouri assistant coach Matt Murray as finalists from a pool of 116 candidates.