April 12, 2022

The Amsterdam Mohawks have had a lengthy history of bringing in players from the country’s top schools and the 2022 season will be no different.

The 2021 Mohawks had the best regular season record, finishing it at 31-9 and making it to the PGCBL championship series for the eighth time since the formation of the league in 2011.

In 2022, the team will have a number of players coming from major conference schools, such as utility player Hunter Hines (Mississippi State), infielder Nick Kurtz (Wake Forest), Dylan Goldstein (Florida Atlantic), some of the top home run hitters in the nation, as well as a multitude of pitchers in Ryan Van Buren (Maryland), Connor Whitaker (Florida State), Ben Kibbe (Utah), Hagan Banks (Alabama) and Quin Konuszewski (Pittsburgh).

Of course, Amsterdam will have no shortage of players from the northern parts of the country as well, with players coming in from schools such as Kyle Lesler (Manhattan), Cameron Love (Rutgers) and Aidan Kidd (NJIT).

“We’re really excited about some guys we’ve got coming,” head coach Keith Griffin said. “I feel like we got a really nice plan right now. We’re still looking for a player or two, another arm, but so are the Yankees, we maybe need one more middle infielder, but other than that we’re pretty set at what we have.”

Griffin, who has been the head coach of the Mohawks since the team joined the league in 2011 and is the longest-tenured coach in the league, said he expects to have a good team at the plate. They will benefit from power and speed and having players that can get on base, with some good pitching as well.

The recruiting is something that Griffin and the Mohawks’ front office works on nearly year-round in preparation for the season. Part of that is having relationships with college coaches around the country who have their players come to Amsterdam. Since Griffin’s PGCBL tenure began in 2011, Amsterdam has had 88 players advance to some level of professional baseball.

“I coached college baseball for about 30 years so I know all of those guys. Those guys are my friends. Those guys, either the head coach or the pitching coach or the recruiting coordinator or somebody on the staff are friends,” Griffin said. “You tell us what you want to send us, we’ll take the three or four guys that you send us and then we’ll build the other part of the team with what else we need.”

Griffin said that the goal in this is making sure that the players improve by the end of the summer so they can go back to their schools better than when they came.

“We coach them. We break down their swings, we try to build their swing, we take them to the bullpen. I have a tremendous pitching coach in Zach Breen. Zach has done a tremendous job with those guys, so when we bring them in, we truly coach them and get them ready for the next,” Griffin said.

In addition, Griffin and Amsterdam want to do some winning too in hopes of bringing another league title to Amsterdam.

“That’s the key,” Griffin said.