Power, speed and deep pitching give Chesterton baseball team confidence it will have a big bounce-back season, starting with Monday's opener vs. Griffith

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Back in August, Chesterton’s two Division I baseball signees, seniors Rob Czarniecki and Troy Bradford, met with head baseball coach John Bogner and asked him a question that elicited a one-word response.
“Hey, can we run more this year?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” Bogner answered.
That short exchange reveals plenty about a Trojans baseball team comfortable with the high expectations going into the season and also says plenty about the two best players.
For one, it says the ballplayers who are eager to play ball in Monday’s season opener at home vs. Griffith are all in for their high school teams and don’t have one foot in Chesterton, one in college already.
The heads of Kentucky-bound Czarniecki and Purdue-bound Barrett are in the right place, focused on how to play a brand of baseball that will translate to the most victories and deepest postseason run.
It also says that the head coach values the opinions of two ballplayers who are as serious as they are talented. Bogner said he had reached the same conclusion earlier in the summer about the need to use speed when the two seniors approached him.
As sophomores, Czarniecki, Barrett and Troy’s older brother Brayden, then a senior, led the Trojans to a 22-7 record and the school’s 20th sectional title, the first under a coach not named Jack Campbell. Czarniecki was named DAC MVP and made the 11-deep all-state team.
Last season, one marred by injuries to Czarniecki and catcher Caden Hackett, the Trojans stumbled to 15-12 and were knocked out of the sectional by Portage in the first round.
Banking on a roster stocked with a number of players who look like linebackers and run like cornerbacks and a deep pitching staff, the Trojans are setting no limits on how far they can extend this season.
They are aiming for a 4A state championship.
“Yes, sir, that’s the goal, but you have to win sectionals before you can get to state,” Barrett said. “One by one, that’s the goal.”
Czarniecki: “I think it’s definitely doable with this group of guys. We have great chemistry and I think this team right now is better than where we were before sophomore year started. I’m really happy with where we’re at and I’m confident in everyone on the team. I think that we can win a lot of games.”
Not only does every conversation about this team start with Barrett and Czarniecki, so does the lineup. When the left-handed Barrett, ace of the pitching staff since his sophomore season, is on the mound, Czarniecki will lead off and Barrett will bat second. When Barrett is in left field, he will lead off and Czarniecki will bat second.
“When Troy and Rob get on, they’re moving,” said Bogner, a math teacher. “The whole world’s going to know that. Mathematically, unless you have a catcher who’s got a 1.8 pop time (seconds from catcher receiving a pitch to an infielder catching his throw) they are fast enough to take almost every base.”
How many runs they score will depend on how much contact the hitters behind them in the lineup make.
After the top two, Bogner said, “We have a lot of No. 5 hitters.”
How they will align remains to be seen, but the best guess now for how Monday’s lineup might look has Hackett, a junior, batting third and senior shortstop Ethan Glassman in the cleanup spot. Junior John Knight is set to join Glassman on the left side of the infield and senior Nate Redman and junior Isaiah Prater are options at second base.
Bogner said seniors Eli McClelland and Dylan Bradford will get the first shots at first base, “and if all else fails, you bring up (junior) Gunner Ello (from the JV) immediately. He had some success on the hardwood and I firmly believe that’ll carry over to the spring.”
Gary Kirkland, the lone sophomore on the varsity roster, will fill the utility infield role, filling in when one of the starters pitches. Junior Michael Szostek backs up Hackett and senior Lucas DeVore catches as well.
A pair of juniors, Sullivan Fleming and left-handed Cameron Campbell, project to share right field and senior Logan Chestovich is in the outfield mix as well. Fleming is one of the fastest athletes in the school.
Barrett will replace Czarniecki in center when the latter pitches.
Bogner likes the way all of his outfielders run down flyballs, so with that going for them and strong-armed, experienced Hackett behind the plate, the defense should be a plus as long as the Trojans consistently make the routine plays in the infield.
In Barrett, the Trojans have an all-state candidate leading the pitching staff again. He is coming off an arthroscopic surgery that removed a bone spur from his left elbow and by all accounts is ahead of schedule in his recovery.
“Troy asked to throw Monday,” Bogner said. “He said he was able to go. So once I see the paperwork, I mean having it on paper that mom and dad are on board, he’ll get the ball. We’ll keep him on a pitch count of 40 or 45. Of course, he’s not where he wants to be. He still has some forearm pain because he hasn’t used those muscles in a while. We don’t need March 30th from him. We need May 30th and June 30th.”
Barrett said he is excited “being able to pitch the first game of the year when I wasn’t expected to. I trust the coaches to take me out when my arm isn’t good enough to keep going.”
But does he trust himself to tell his coaches the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about how his valuable left arm is feeling?
“As a competitor, no,” Barrett said. “But for my health, I’m going to try to be a little more honest with them and tell them when I need to be pulled.”
Barrett posted mind-blowing numbers in his first two varsity seasons. He went 14-2 with a 1.14 ERA and in 104 innings struck out 178 batters and walked just 27. He also is a career .393 hitter with 20 doubles, three triples and a home run.
Bradford, who features a filthy curveball and a good fastball, has committed to pitch at Grace College and projects as the No. 2 starter.
“Dylan’s coming along very well,” Barrett said. “His body control has been a lot better, so all of his misses are around the zone. He’s been really good this year and I expect a really big year from him.”
Bogner said that as many as nine players on the 15-man varsity roster will pitch, a good thing considering that starting with Friday’s opener of a three-game, two-day road trip, the Trojans play 12 games in a 13-day stretch. That's a heavy workload for early in the season when the pitchers’ arm strength isn’t where it will be as they progress deeper into the season.
“We have a lot of arms. If we throw mechanically disciplined pitches, we have a lot of arms,” Bogner said. “We have a lot of guys we can put out there.”
As a sophomore, the hard-throwing Czarniecki went 4-0 with an 0.73 ERA and struck out 45 batters in 28-⅔ innings, numbers that indicate the team has a dominant pitcher closing games.
Chestovich, Glassman and Knight combined for 15 bullpen appearances last season and first-year varsity players Campell, Fleming and Kirkland also will pitch, Bogner said.
Czarniecki and Barrett are convinced that running the bases more aggressively will add to the run support for the pitchers and their coach agrees.
“We are really fast and that’s great for this sport,” Barrett said. “It’s good for defense and stealing bases, and if you’re stealing there are more chances of them committing errors. If you’re trying to stretch a single into a double, they have to be perfect with that, so you just put a lot more pressure on the defense.”
Added Czarniecki: “We’re very athletic. Coach (Chris) Hackett coming aboard (as an assistant) has made it a big point of emphasis to get faster and we worked on speed stuff throughout the fall and winter. Our 60 times are way better and being able to steal bases and get runners into scoring position is going to help us so much.”
In addition to Czarniecki, a five-tool talent, and Barrett, Bogner said that Caden Hackett, Fleming, Prater, Campbell and others have the speed to put pressure on defenses.
“Once we get them on, we’ve got to keep them moving,” Bogner said. “I get afraid to mess with kids at bats. I call a hit and run and they’ll shrug their shoulders. It’s not a matter of whether hitters like it, it’s a matter of we’ve got to do it.”
The Trojans stole 37 bases in 2024, 14 last season.
“That’s on me for not putting too much pressure on people, hoping that kids would come through hitting and I find ourselves staring at a 15-12 record,” Bogner said.
He and his players expect far more stolen bases and wins this year, starting Monday against visiting Griffith, when the forecast calls for a high of 72 degrees, 4:30 p.m. first pitch.