It is an exciting time to be a baseball fan in Westfield. Since Coach Seth Kaplan took over for the Owl’s, the team has amounted 25 wins in each of the past two seasons, earning the fourth seed in ‘24 and the third seed in ‘25 for the MASCAC playoff tournament. The goals are always the same, and the team’s rise is all about the philosophies behind their work, and the coaches who stand behind the players through it all. Coach Kaplan, with more than twenty years of coaching experience across several schools and divisions, is bringing a philosophy of toughness and caring to reach the goal of the MASCAC championship coming home to Westfield.
Coach Kaplan brings with him ideals and skills found when he played baseball at UMass. They followed him from being an assistant coach at Sacred Heart for 10 years and UMass Dartmouth for 3. He lifted many players with them at Dean and Lesley. In his 5 years at Dean, he became the second-winningest coach in schools history, and led them to their first NJCAA Region 21 championship in 50 years. He served as Lesley’s head coach for four years before taking over the Owls.
To Coach Kaplan, the team is his family, and they are all on the same path to success. With so much talent, and so much faith in everyone around him, there is always a reason to show up and leave everything on the field, to know that a run to the trophy is possible, and it may happen soon. The season opens on February 27 against Eastern Connecticut State, who won the national title in 2022.
Light edits were made for clarity.
There was a big jump out from 2023. The team was .500 even with nineteen wins and then you came in and it was up to 27 wins. What did you see with this team when you first when you first came in?
Yeah, there was (Coach Nathan) Bash(aw), did such a really good job before me, about putting the program where it needed to be, so the talent was here. I think what needed to be done or what I was able to do was certainly with myself and coach Rob, our pitching coach, was kind of take the pitching staff and kind of give them a little bit more direction, and I don’t take any of the credit for that. That was all about (Rob) Hitt, he did such a fantastic job… you know you have Ryan Lapierre and you have you know a couple others. Ryan Donahue was here and those guys as upperclassmen, and you walk in and he’s like a lot easier at the same time, I think it was a challenge for this is how we go out doing things let’s go get it done that way so certainly for me it was upgraded in terms of pitching staff defense as well because the offense was here…
(Coach Nathan Bashaw was the head coach of the Owls for 11 years, and stepped down after the 2023 season. A two-time recipient of the MASCAC sportsmanship coach of the year, the Owls made deep playoff runs more than half of the years he coached).
(Rob Hitt was the pitching coach up to last season).
(Ryan Lapierre was a starting pitcher and graduated in 2024).
(Ryan Donahue was a starting pitcher and graduated in 2024).
I was looking back when you had Dan Burnett. He had a really great season last year. I was looking at some of his stats, and he was like third in the school in terms of home runs he was here 2 years… he was recruited before you came here?
Correct. (Coach) Bash did such a good job getting him as well, you know, coming off of when Hartford decided to make the change and go from (Division) 1 to 3. Danny kind of looked at himself and said if I’m going to do that, I’m not going to go pay for the education of Hartford. I think that’s going to be a tough role to fill. Definitely, I think I’m going to say it this way- it’s not frustrating because you know, it’s Danny- but you know he’s gonna coach, so he’s here every day. So it’s more of like wow, we still have the guy, even though he’s not on the roster, but he’s still here and still in uniform, but he’s helping obviously lead the guys, and they have all the respect in the world for him, you know. He’s the hardest working guy that we had last year, so it’s just a matter of kind of moving him into the role of mentor… and kind of, you know, pushing his career path a little bit forward, but you know he hit a home run in the alumni game, so kind of it’s like, you know, I can still do this kind of thing, so he’s going to be a tough one to replace…
It seems like you trust him a lot, and trust him enough to put him on your staff, and trust was something that you said that was important when you first came in… How do you approach gaining the trust of everyone first coming in?
Yeah, I think it’s I think it’s letting everybody know how much you care about them, you know, it’s taking the time during practice or meetings, or you know, having my door open in the office and saying hey, come on in, let’s sit down and talk what are you going through right now. Maybe it’s something I went through, or maybe it’s something Danny went through, or one of the coaches went through, so it’s just connecting to people with the right spots and then following up on it, and once you do that and have their trust, then it’s like hey you know what maybe this isn’t working for you right now. Let’s try this with their best interests at heart, so that’s what we’re trying to do on a daily basis.
Along with trust, you said that you look for toughness in players. What does that look like to you?
I’ll give you for instance. It hasn’t happened yet, but yeah, we’re gonna practice Saturday morning at 7:30. We’re gonna practice Sunday morning at 8:00. Toughness is rolling out of bed when you know, you don’t really want to, and then going to compete because we put a lot into a live situations, so the chance to get out and face your teammates is always a big deal and that’s coming up this weekend. So it’s hey, get food in you, get out of bed let’s go, you know, this is what we’re all building for, I think for me. It’s that, it’s how do you compete and how do you show your toughness? And it’s getting up early in the morning or staying late at night and getting downstairs in the weight room and getting after it a little bit, so that’s the fun part.
The team’s always change slightly every year, because you have seniors who graduated or players who might just come into other sports, so does your definition of toughness change from year to year or do you always try to expect the same thing?
That’s a good one. I think it’s probably a little bit of both, if that makes any sense. I think for me, it’s you gotta have a core toughness, right? You gotta have what is the team going to be about, and I think that changes depending on who comes in and who leaves, you know, if we go from a really offensive club last year to pitching and defensive club this year, so that toughness is now, you know, how do we get off the field and get a chance to swing it back, whereas last year it was like let’s just keep swinging as much as we can, you know ,we’re just gonna score 20 something runs the game, so I think those are the core things of toughness… it’s gotta be there every year from individuals.
I looked through like that game logs and early in the season, if you guys won, it was by a lot. The team averaged ended over .300 and that’s really good. I did notice though like sometimes the ERA’s for individual games was high. Heading into the season, how do you find like a balance between pitching and hitting?
We didn’t want to make a change, but we made a change as our pitching coach, Robbie, left to go back to his home in Quinnipiac, so essentially, he got promoted, which is nice. Pat Strange comes in, and Coach Strange has done such a tremendous job already in terms of this, and here’s a guy who pitched in the big leagues. You’ve got this guy on staff, and so when he talks, you know, and our guys are just paying attention to everything, so you know for me it’s OK, here’s how we’re going to do it. We’ve got the talent on the staff. We’ve got the guy that lead the staff now. What we’ve got to do is pay attention to how we’re executing, and I think that’s the jump that our guys are ready to make, you know? We’re old on the mount, which is nice. You know, junior senior up top with a couple of younger guys filling in down the road, which is great. Our closer’s a senior, here like we’ve got experience where we needs to be experienced, I think our pitchers are ready to kind of sit back and go, you know? We were here last year. We kind of you know we were there now we’re going to set you up for them.
(ERA= Earned Run Average. It is a statistic that measures how many runs a pitcher allows a game, and is generally used as an overall measure of a pitcher).
These teams have been good these past two years 25 plus wins each year and that’s pretty good, but there’s always still room for growth and improvement. What does that look like to you?
Championships. That’s it. That’s what it comes down to. It means yeah, we have really two really successful years the last two years, but they didn’t end the way we wanted it to end. I mean nothing ever does until you’re the last guy standing, right? But you know just in terms of getting the MASCAC championship, we don’t have that, and that’s something that where, you know, we wake up and talk about every day. We chase it every day and we’re in the weight room every day to get better, to get it- it’s not like the last two years teams because those guys worked their tails off. They really did a nice job, but we fell short, and you know, I think that’s something that drives these guys every day is to make sure that doesn’t happen.
(MASCAC= Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference)
Heading into the season you always want to go all the way but at the end of the season sometimes it doesn’t happen close what do you say to the guys when that happens?
Yeah, two years ago I was stunned, you know, when we go out to Salem and lose, and I thought if we could have gotten through that game, you know, even though we would have to run in Bridgewater… I still thought Lap(ierre) was going to throw one of those games, so you know hopefully we had a shot. Last year it’s just almost a gut punch because you know, you lose the first round, and you get eliminated and you know, they get on the bus graduating 13 seniors… That was one of the most miserable rides back that I’ve ever had because it just kept thinking about it wasn’t supposed to end this way, you know, it wasn’t supposed to end right there. So that was tough. I think what you do is you kind of grab the younger guys and kind of go you know, you gotta remember this feeling, and you gotta remember that we never want to experience this again. Like this is just miserable, so you know you gotta work every day to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
Your motivation, they’re kind of hand in hand. It’s winning a championship and making sure you never experience that feeling again, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah, it was. I’ll tell you off that field and Maritime last year was hard. It was hard because I kept thinking we were gonna come back and win. I mean, I don’t think even you know we’re down to the last out it was like OK, how did we get one guy on base when you’re one guy on we’re gonna score a couple of runs, like we could do this, and then I was like wait a minute that was it we’re out. We’re done. It was difficult last year.
Anything else that you do, or you say to get all these guys ready for this upcoming season?
I think it’s just a reminder of the previous year. We know what our goals are, what their responsibilities are. You know, we do this every day. How do you wake up every day? How do you go to class every day? How do you eat every day? Everything that you do matters, and it matters towards our ultimate goal, and what those are, so we certainly spend an awful lot of time in the classroom to make sure our guys are aware of what’s the priority. We have some sacrifice an awful lot, you know, to be a part of everything that we’re doing, and you know, this is the road that they’ve chosen. This is the road that we’ve chosen and we’re on it together. I think we’re just kind of remind them of that that we’re here together for this.
You said goals as a plural. What other goals do you try to have this season?
Well the biggest one the number one goal is to have team GPA 3.3. That’s first and foremost. The goal is to remind our guys they’re here for their education, so there’s that, the academic goal. We’re at 3.2 this past fall, so we were close, as close as we’ve ever gotten to it, so we’re on the right track in that aspect. Then obviously the second goal with MASCAC so we can get into the NCAA tournament. I like to think that it’s to win a national championship. I don’t want to sell our guys short of that, so you know, that’s obviously two ultimate goals: 3.3 GPA and winning a national title is what it’s actually about all.
What excites you most heading into this season?
Gosh, I think it’s again it’s our seniors, sending these guys out the right way. We’ve gone through a lot obviously, the last couple of years, you know? Coaching changes are never easy, you know building everything from where, you know, coach Bashaw left it… so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing these guys get on the field and play again together. That’s a lot of fun, and we’ve got 4 senior outfielders, so watching them on a daily basis is fun. Doing 12 (seniors) again, so it’s another big class going out, so yeah, I think it’s more of, you know, seeing this group come together, and then, you know, taking on a schedule that’s pretty challenging this year, so we’ll get after it as best we can.
That goal is always a championship?
The goal is always the championship, always your MASCAC championship. It’s actually to get the number one seed 1st so you can host the thing, yeah, and then it’s obviously you get to, you know, to get to the tournament at the end and hold on hold the trophy at the end of the season.
