[Stardust]

Mason County's baseball team lost just one senior from last season and has just three seniors this year. That has forced the Royals to depend largely on juniors and underclassmen, particularly last year, and first-year coach Tom Posey looks for that youthful experience to pay dividends in the 2012 campaign.
"The good thing is, all of our guys that are back have experience, and I think that's gonna be a key to us this year going into the season," Posey said Monday. "You'll get some experienced players, but we're still a young team with only three seniors."
Jeris Carver was the only senior to finish last season with Mason, which went 10-19, losing its first 12 games before winning seven of its last 10. That late stretch included their eighth consecutive 39th District tournament title and was capped by a loss to eventual 10th Region champion George Rogers Clark in the first round of the region tourney.
Now Mason brings back three seniors who were key components of last year's lineup -- Derek Moore, Trevor Taylor and Connor Osborne. Moore and Taylor anchored infield spots, while Osborne was the Royals' ace on the mound and a solid outfielder. Moore led off, Osborne batted third and Taylor hit cleanup in what became a more often than not productive lineup by the end of the season.
Pitching and defense is what wins baseball games, and the Royals have several players in the mix to spend time on the mound. Posey rattled off quite a few names as those possible to throw some innings: Osborne, Moore, Aaron Scilley, Nathan Cracraft, Logan Brown, Tyler Baxter, Dillion Applegate, Bryce Gardner and Daulton Mason, who is "about 90 percent" recovered from injury, Posey estimated.
"We've just been developing (pitching) since August since we've been doing our fall ball and our weightlifting and conditioning, just trying to get a lot of guys in to pitch," Posey said. "...We don't want to overthrow 'em, but I think we've got enough pitchers that we can keep 'em fresh and be ready to play day by day.
"Really with what we've got, we've got a lot of guys that we could put in to throw that we're excited about."
The Royals expect their performance on the mound will be a key determining factor in how they fare.
"The pitching's gonna be a big, big emphasis for us 'cause you gotta have pitching and you gotta throw strikes," Posey said.
Mason has a pretty good idea of what personnel it will use across most of the rest of the diamond. Posey said Kyler Sapp should start behind the plate, while Brown, Taylor and Baxter will compete for the first-base job. Moore, Scilley and Nick Walker are sharing time at second, and Mason, Moore, Scilley and Lukas Greenhill are all possibilities to spend time at shortstop.
Posey called third base "a question mark," with Gardner, Applegate, Taylor, Michael Sutton and Reese Menke all players who could see time there.
Osborne will be called upon to anchor the outfield when he's not pitching, with Nathan Cracraft, Greenhill, Scilley and Cody Whisman all likely to play out there, Posey said.
"That's kind of what we're looking at varsity level that we could throw out there and feel pretty good about our lineup," Posey said. "With having everybody back but one, we can rotate guys in different positions and still feel that we're pretty comfortable. ... The first half of the season, we're just gonna play around with it just to see who wants to play bad enough to step up and take the positions."
The Royals have a pretty well-balanced schedule populated both by teams they should beat and teams that will present a challenge. Falling into the latter group is three teams ranked in the preseason coaches' state top 25 -- No. 9 Harrison County, 10th-ranked Bryan Station and No. 23 Ashland Blazer. Bishop Brossart, which also received votes in the poll, is also on the docket.
"The first part of the season looking at the schedule, we've got some tough teams on there, and as the season goes on hopefully we'll get better," Posey said. "We're not gonna take any team for granted. We're still a young team, and everybody that's on our schedule, we could win or lose on any given day. We're gonna have to approach a game pitch by pitch and inning by inning with everybody we play."
The Royals open the season Monday at Newport. Mason plays the next day at Fleming County, and its home opener is March 22 against Harrison.


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