College Sports

JACKSONVILLE — If playing in a summer wood-bat baseball league is supposed to help hitters improve their craft, the future looks bright for Jake Welch.

The former Alexandria star was redshirted this spring at Jacksonville State — an admittedly difficult transition at first after being an everyday player his entire career — so his baseball season didn't really began until this month, when he started playing for the East Alabama Big Train of the Great South League.

It hasn't taken long for him to make up for lost time. Playing with wood bats for the first time in his life, splitting time between the infield corners and designated hitter, Welch was batting more than .400 going into last weekend's series with the Mentium Athletics.

"I'm glad to be back out here and playing; any time you're playing, you're getting better," Welch said. "They don't make us play summer ball (at JSU), but they want us to, and especially in my situation, a guy who got redshirted, this is my season right here. Everybody else is done with theirs. Now I get to play and get my bats."

And he seems to be making the most of them.

Welch never played with wood bats until he joined the Big Train. It's typical for players used to the ping of metal bats to struggle with the transition to lumber, and Welch did early on. But after Friday's first game against the Athletics, he was hitting .420 with a .667 slugging percentage.

If he can carry that clip into next spring, then he'll be a solid addition to what is expected to be a strong Jax State lineup.

"He's been doing great," Big Train head coach Robert Martinez said. "He's not a home-run power kid. He's just a guy who hits the ball in the gap.

"If we have a runner at third base, I want him at the plate because he'll produce a run somehow. He'll put the ball in play and get an RBI."

Welch justified his coach's confidence in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader with the Athletics. In the sixth inning of the nightcap, he broke open a 6-6 tie with a two-run double and later scored the insurance run in a 9-7 victory that lifted his team into first place in the league's South Division.

"With his swing, he won't struggle much, because he stays inside of the ball well," Martinez explained. "He knows the right mechanics, so (the switch to wood) hasn't affected him much.

"I think (hitting wood) will make him that much better. It'll teach him to hit the ball the right way. By the time he goes back hitting metal, it'll make him that much better."

But it didn't come easy. Welch's first few days with the club, he found himself popping everything up. On the first pitch of his first real at-bat since high school, at the LaGrange Georgia Stars, he swung and felt stiff.

He chalked that up to nerves. The next day, when the Big Train chugged into Marietta, he had a couple hits and has been comfortable at the plate ever since.

"I was really looking forward to it because these wood bats really teach you how to hit," Welch said. "If you don't hit the sweet spot, you don't really hit it hard. If you hit it on the sweet spot, it'll go as far as you want it to go.

"At first I hated the wood bats because they're a lot different, but now that I've gotten used to them, I like them a lot. It really teaches you to hit. At first I was a little worried, but when I finally had a good day, it was just baseball, what we had been playing since I'd been five years ago."

When Welch gets back to JSU in the fall, he'll have a shot to compete for the first base job on what he expects will be a "pretty good" team. He knows whatever he can do now to improve will help him down the road.

"(JSU coach Jim Case) didn't promise me anything, and I wouldn't want him to," Welch said. "I need to get better, work on defense, get my feet quicker, just work on all parts of the game. It starts with playing this summer league, getting out there and not laying up on the couch.

"I'm doing all I can. If I get out there and don't win the job, I'll know I've done all I can and we'll go from there."