Alexandria Carter/ Winonan

According to the 2015 NSIC Preseason Baseball Coaches’ Poll, the Winona State Warriors baseball team is predicted to finish fourth after Minnesota State, St. Cloud State and Augustana College.

Last season Winona State lost in the Championship 4-3 against Augustana.

The Warriors finished fifth in the NSIC with a 20-11 conference record and finished 27-22 overall.

Head coach Kyle Poock said, “We have all our players from last season returning. We just want to get out there and play good baseball.”

Junior Tyler Nehring ranked fifth in the NSIC last year in batting average, seventh in slugging, eighth in hits and 12th in RBIs making him an NSIC First Team selection in 2014 at shortstop. Nehring led the Warriors in batting average (.389), hits (72), runs batted in (41), slugging percentage (.600) and on-base percentage (.426).

“To prepare for this season, our whole team put in a lot of work in the offseason. We have a great staff of coaches and trainers that have done their absolute best to help us be ready,” Nehring said. “Whether it was hitting, throwing, getting work done in the weight room, or just hanging out with each other and building the camaraderie that we have with this team, we put in a lot of time to be fully prepared for this season.”

Last season senior pitcher Chase Blazier started 10 games and posted a 7-2 record (sixth in the NSIC) with a 3.00 ERA (15th in the NSIC), and led the NSIC in fewest walks (6) while pitching the second-most innings per game (6.3) in the conference for a total of 63 innings.  He also earned gold glove award as a pitcher last season for the Warriors.

Blazier said, “Personally, I don’t like to set many goals.  I found that you tend to focus more on the goals, like getting so many strikeouts or keeping your ERA under 3.00, than actually on going out and competing.  In my mind, it’s all about getting the win no matter how you do it.”

Senior Travis Evanson said, “I believe that we have a very strong team, and I’m going to set the bar high to win the last game of the year.”

Evanson is coming off of a second-team all-conference performance, leading the Warriors in home runs last season with 12. Evanson finished third in the NSIC in home runs and was eighth in the NSIC with a slugging percentage of .587.

On Thursday, Feb. 5, the Warriors will officially start their season against Tarleton State in the Astros In Action tournament in Houston, Texas.

“In Texas, our goal is to get everyone back into playing on a full-size field again and to compete with the teams down there,” Nehring said. “We have a pretty tough non-conference schedule every year that prepares us for our conference schedule, and the games down in Texas are no exception to that. We should come out of Houston in a lot better shape than last year’s showing down there.”

Evanson said the Warriors have a lot of returners to the team this year and his expectations are “to play solid baseball and win games.”

After the Astros in Action tournament in Houston, Winona State is scheduled to open its first NSIC game on March 21 with a doubleheader against Bemidji State at home.