Yellow Jacket Baseball Lands Four on HCAC Watch List

GREENWOOD, Ind. – The Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference recently announced its 2012 preseason baseball poll and watch list. Defiance College had four student-athletes named as HCAC Players to Watch with Nick Bratt, Stephen Leskow, Darin Waterman and Aaron Helland making the list.

Bratt anchored the rotation as a sophomore in 2010 and is returning to the Yellow Jackets after missing the 2011 campaign due to injury. The Ottawa Lake, Mich. native led DC with three wins and nine games started on the mound during his last full season, after opening the year with a 3-0 record and a 3.38 earned-run average in his first 32 innings of work.

Leskow was named to the HCAC Watch List after being selected as an Honorable Mention All-HCAC hurler in 2011. Leskow excelled during league play as a sophomore, pitching at least six innings in five-of-six HCAC starts. The Defiance, Ohio native held foes to three earned runs or fewer in all but one of those outings and ranked 11th in the HCAC among pitchers with at least five league starts with a 4.29 ERA.

Waterman joined Leskow on the Honorable Mention All-HCAC list one year ago, after leading all Defiance pitchers with 10 starts and 47 strikeouts as a freshman. The Celina, Ohio native burst onto the collegiate scene with a 2-0 mark and a 2.48 ERA through his first five starts on the bump and ended the year with a DC-leading 8.5 strikeouts per nine innings and a two-to-one strikeout to walk ratio.

The only Yellow Jacket batter to make the preseason list was Helland, who joins Waterman among a strong sophomore class for the Purple and Gold. Helland led all HCAC performers with 21 stolen bases and ranked just outside the top-five in the league by working 24 walks. The Defiance, Ohio native led DC with a .375 on-base percentage and started 32 games in the outfield.

Bratt, Leskow and Waterman will be leaned on to highlight a pitching staff that is returning 24-of-38 starts from one year ago and 11 total lettermen. That group accounted for nearly 70 percent of Defiance's innings pitched from 2011.

Helland will help to anchor an offense that boasts seven returning starters and 12 total lettermen. DC's returning hitters racked up 800 at bats in 2011 and accounted for 73 of the squad's 104 runs batted in.

Defiance was picked 10th in the 2012 HCAC Preseason Poll with 12 points, finishing behind Earlham (26), Hanover (35), MSJ (42) and Bluffton (47). Franklin was selected as the favorite to claim the HCAC championship with 94 points and seven first-place votes, with Anderson (79), Manchester (76), Rose-Hulman (76) and Transylvania (63) filling out the top five.

The Jackets will begin the 2012 season at Centre College on March 2 at 6:00 pm with a single game against Calvin.