The Devils Lake A team has been quick to wipe away the sting of falling just short in the EDC tournament. The squad, comprised mostly of the same players who made up the Firebirds, has jumped headfirst into the American Legion summer season.
With doubleheader sweeps on Wednesday and Thursday, the Storm are off to a 4-0 start. Here are some initial takeaways from their early success.
The offense is doing just about everything right
The Devils Lake offense was good during the spring season — but it wasn’t this good!
Perhaps it’s the relatively easier competition, facing A-level pitching in a three-class system compared to the regular season, when the Firebirds were in the higher of only two divisions. Or maybe it’s the fact that the wind has been blowing out almost 30 mph to left field. Maybe it’s just the warmer, crisper air.
Make any excuse you want, but the Storm are hitting.
They’ve gotten on base at an absurd .523 clip so far — over half the time. They’re hitting .397 as a team, and they’re even hitting for some power, too. That was something they really didn’t do during the regular season. They have four home runs as a team, all coming on Thursday. It was the first of Trason Beck and Mason Palmer’s careers, and the first for Beau Brodina in 2024.
For reference, the Firebirds hit four home runs during the entire spring season — and three of them came from Jackson Baeth. The lone unmentioned home run on Thursday was, of course, hit by Baeth.
In short, the Storm are hitting even better than the Firebirds did, and they’re doing it with a little added pop, too. They’ve also tallied five doubles from five different players, and Parker Brodina chipped in a triple.
During the spring, their calling card was their walk rate. Even at times when they weren’t hitting, they were getting on base via the walk. Through the first three games of the summer, their walk rate was actually down below 12%, which is still good, but their spring walk rate was 14.9%.
Well, that narrative changed in Thursday’s nightcap.
The Storm won 13-3 in five innings, and drew a whopping 12 walks in that game. Yes, the Minot pitchers were all over the place, but the Devils Lake hitters still showed the discipline to grind out plate appearances rather than becoming overanxious. The performance shot their walk rate all the way up to 18.8% — now that’s more familiar territory.
Devils Lake has been limiting its strikeouts, too, with a rate of only 7%. The Storm are walking more than twice as often as they’re striking out. That’s a fantastic recipe for success.
They’re still working on cleaning up defense
Devils Lake won all four games this week despite one clear flaw: defense.
The Firebirds were fundamentally sound for most of the spring, but the Storm haven’t been quite as clean. Maybe you could blame part of that on the insane howling winds they’ve had to play in. But still, these fielders likely wouldn’t use that as an excuse, given they know they’re capable of much better.
And head coach Brent Luehring echoed the same sentiment.
The Storm combined for 11 errors in the first three games of the summer. They almost looked like they were rushing things at times, and maybe trying to go too big at others. Curiously, some of these errors came from Palmer, who played an incredible shortstop all spring.
To Devils Lake’s credit, the defense was much cleaner in the 13-3, five-inning win. And Luehring certainly knows the skill is still there. The Storm just need to go back to the basics and play calm, collected defense — something they did while playing on the Firebirds for most of the spring. They’d be the first to say it needs to get better, especially since they’ve proven they’re capable of vastly improved defense.
Maybe once they’re not playing in winds that are near gale force, they won’t make so many errors.
Will Heilman is bidding for a spot in a deep lineup
Heilman is in a unique position of essentially being a member of both the A and B teams. He’s one of the A team’s younger players, but he’s progressively proving he deserves to play among the big boys.
Luehring has said that if Heilman continues to produce, he’s going to be hard to take out of the lineup. The shortstop/right fielder is 5-for-13 on the young summer, with two RBIs, two walks and three runs scored. He’s fit nicely into the middle of the lineup.
And that’s another thing: Luehring has slowly started to place him higher in the starting lineup. His confidence in the young player just continues to grow. And it gives Devils Lake another offensive weapon, one that lengthens the lineup.
The Storm’s lineup is already lengthened compared to the Firebirds’, considering that they also have Simon Beach in the middle of things. Beach is the most experienced player on the team, with a season of junior college baseball already behind him. He hasn’t been in the lineup for every game, but he’s off to a 2-for-6 start.
That goes back to the first point of how well this offense has been producing as a unit. The top five hitters in the typical lineup — B. Brodina, Fausten Olson, Palmer, Baeth and P. Brodina — each have an OBP of at least .500. P. Brodina has been seeing the ball especially well and actually has the best stats of any hitter on the team so far. He’s 5-for-8 with two extra-base hits and four walks. His absurd .704 weighted on-base average is by far the highest on the club.
So with a deep lineup — one where there’s still competitions happening, and players like Hunter Remmick, Taydon Triepke and Easton Kraft contributing off the bench — the Storm have gotten the American Legion season off to a quick start.
And as the dog days of summer in North Dakota near, they’ll look to keep the bats as hot as the upcoming weather.
