Tigers' baseball season starts March 13 at Caldwell

The Mountain Home Tigers open their 2014 baseball season Thursday at Caldwell against the Cougars.

Mark Cotton returns for his fourth year as head coach of the Tigers and is pleased with this year's turnout for Tiger baseball.

"It was really good this year. We're carrying pretty heavy rosters on JV and varsity this year. We have all those that were sophomores last year and I think things are looking really good and healthy for our program."

Coach Cotton likes the experience he has back from last year's squad, which went 11-15 overall and 6-10 in conference.

"I think the two senior leaders that we really have are Danny Brescia and Levi Abrahamson. We also have some good leadership in that junior class, too, with guys like Bailey Miller-Hodge, he's really stepping up for us, and Cody Blakemore, as well as Zach Petersen, Teddy Reaume and Tyler McCall. Those guys worked really hard all winter, and I'm expecting big things out of them."

Coach Cotton expects the 4A Southern Idaho Conference to once again be tough, but hopes to be in the thick of things in the conference race this year.

"I think we have a great opportunity to do some damage this year in the SIC, but we've got a lot work to do before we start talking about that," he said.

Bishop Kelly and Skyview are Coach Cotton's picks as being the teams to beat in the conference this year.

"I think they're the teams to beat -- I think they always are -- they've got a lot of pitching and they're just tough to beat. We've struggled with them. We had BK here last year and then gave that one up.

"I think we can compete with anyone in the conference. We have solid pitching -- we have good one-two, and three-starters. I think depth is a question mark for us right now. We've got to see who can come off the bench and kind of step up for us, but I think we can compete for those top spots, if we can develop the way that we think we can."

The Tigers hosted a jamboree Saturday with Bishop Kelly, Emmett and Wood River. Coach Cotton was pleased with what he saw.

"By just looking at our practices this past week, I was not very optimistic about how we would show in the jamboree," the coach said. "However, I felt as though we put a quality product on the field. We played great defense, pitched it well, and executed at the plate.

"My biggest concern at this point in the season is our sticks (bats)," the coach added. We are too passive at the plate. I would rather us be overly aggressive early in the season, than passive."