CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State baseball team is working out on a daily basis at Goss Stadium, getting ready for the start of the season that is now less than 10 days away. OSU opens its 2011 campaign Feb. 19 against Gonzaga, in Fresno, Calif.
The official online home of Oregon State Athletics, osubeavers.com, would like to help you get prepared for the 2011 campaign with the Oregon State baseball preview. In the weeks leading up to the start of the season, we will have positional previews, Q&A sessions with a few newcomers and much much more.
Today, we look at the team’s outfield. Oregon State will return a good core group of its outfielders, but like in the infield, is expected to have a balance after newcomers joined the program in the fall.
OSU returns Michael Miller and Jared Norris in the outfield, both of whom saw a good amount of time in right field. Miller is scrappy outfielder from Cashmere, Wash., who will be in his fourth season with Oregon State. Norris is a versatile player who originally hailed from Iowa and will be with OSU for his third season. He has the ability to play first and right field for the Beavers.
OSU gets the services back of Garrett Nash, who missed the last two seasons while on a mission. In 2008, his freshman campaign, Nash, a native of Draper, Utah, batted .277 with eight doubles, a triple and a home run. He will lend a great deal of speed for the team in 2011.
Those three constitute the group OSU fans are most familiar with as players like Max Gordon, Jordan Poyer and Brian Stamps are newcomers to the program and who will add a great deal of speed to the lineup. Poyer will be doing double duty in 2011 as he also stars on the OSU football team. A native of Astoria, he was The Oregonian’s Player of the Year after his senior season in 2009.
Stamps, as we wrote about in the infield preview yesterday, has the ability to play both the infield and the outfield and could see a great deal of time at either location. Speed is his game as he was 15-for-19 in stolen base attempts at Sacramento City College last season and 28-for-35 over his two seasons.
Gordon, meanwhile, arrived on campus after one season at Sierra College in California. There, he hit .284 and had 13 stolen bases. He is not entirely unfamiliar to those in the Oregon State program; he teamed with Oregon State junior right-hander Sam Gaviglio while the two were at Ashland High School in southern Oregon.
Let’s see what Oregon State assistant coach Pat Bailey had to say about his outfield this season.
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