By ADEM SARICAOGLU
THE Melbourne Aces will be pretty keen to bounce back in strong fashion during their Australian Baseball League home opener against Adelaide this weekend.
The Altona-based Aces have started the new season 1-3 after a tough opening road series against the reigning champion Canberra Cavalry.
However Aces manager Phil Dale believes his side remained “solid” against one of the ABL’s better teams.
“Canberra is a very good team because they’ve got a lot of imports from the US and more than any other team,” Dale explained.
“We had three very close games that could’ve gone either way, but unfortunately we only picked up one of them.
“But as far as our club goes we performed well with a much different line-up than we had last year, so I’m looking for good things as the season goes along.”
The Aces will play their first home game of the season at Altona’s Melbourne Ballpark this Friday night against the Bite before hosting two more games on Saturday and Sunday.
Dale told Star he’ll be looking for an improved effort from his relief pitchers this time around after they struggled to close games out against Canberra.
“We’re going to go hard at it and it’s our first home series,” Dale said.
“So we want to start off strong at home and make up for the first series on the road.”
With US imports Justin Trapp, Jared Schlehuber, Ryan Casteel and Tyler Massey all on board alongside home-grown stars Brad Harmon, Justin Huber and Josh Davies, Dale is confident he has enough weapons at his disposal to get his Aces back into the playoffs later this summer.
“We’ve got a lot more offence throughout one through nine, so we’re very good there,” Dale explained.
“We’ve also got a lot of pitching, so it’s just a matter of staying healthy and if we do, I’m very confident with the look of our line-up.
“Obviously you’ll want to win as many games as you can and hopefully that’ll land us in the playoffs, which is our goal, and I think on paper we’re definitely up there with the best teams in the league.”
