Hartnell Baseball’s New Coach Strives for Winning Culture

First-year Hartnell Head Baseball Coach Kyle Czaplak appreciates how important this year is to his team’s long-term outlook, but he also knows that success leads to success.

“If you win ballgames and play competitive baseball, then typically the culture follows suit,” Czaplak said ahead of his team’s opening home doubleheader against Lassen – at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Jan. 28 on the Tony Teresa Diamond.

He is a Salinas native who attended Pacific Grove High School before going onto Santa Clara University. Czaplak completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology and played for Broncos Baseball, making his mark as a pinch hitter and pinch runner. He also played shortstop for Cal State Monterey Bay and in 2019 became a volunteer assistant coach for the Otters.

Czaplak is feeling good about his Panthers team, which recruited new players this fall and added more over the winter break. One of the new arrivals is Calan Zemaitis, a 2020 graduate of Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, who’ll play middle infielder and start in the heart of the batting rotation.

“We’re trying to gel in a short amount of time with the whole group,” Czaplak said, “but I think we’ve made some good headway, and we’ve got good momentum going into opening week.”

This year’s roster is bigger than usual, at 38, providing some depth in case COVID-19 exposure keeps players away at any time during the season.

Czaplak described his pitching crew as young, but showing a lot of improvement during fall practices with new pitching coach Gil Ruiz, a Hartnell alum.

“We won’t find out until we get between the lines and the lights are on,” he said.

Without blazing speed, “We’re going to have to do some things creatively to get outs,” Czaplak said, “and that’s pitch backwards, be able to locate the fastball inside, throw off-speed in any count and just try to keep guys off balance. And then it really comes down to the catching behind them.

“If everybody does their job, we should be OK.”

Things are similar from a hitting standpoint – with some bunting and slash-bunt capabilities and a bit of base-running speed, he said.

“The guys that were with us (in fall), we have an idea of what they can do and what their role will be, but some of these guys coming in a little bit later, we’re going to have to find out,” Czaplak said.

“I see our offense being more of a hybrid offense. We’ll find ways to put pressure on the defense and try to generate some action, and we’ll use our speed to hopefully manufacture runs.”

Across the board, he said, his players are “a really good group of men who are bought in.

“We have new faces and new staff,” Czaplak said. “We see it as an opportunity to go out and really do something special. We’re looking forward to hopefully coming out and sneaking up on some guys and making some noise this year.”