Saluki baseball coach Dan Callahan will not consider this upcoming baseball season a rebuilding year.

That is pretty tough to say considering the team signed 18 new faces to its roster during the off-season. Callahan said of the 18 signees, four of them are shortstops.

Obviously only one of them can play at short, he said. We’ll probably put one in the outfield and one at third base. That leaves three middle infielders to fill two positions (shortstop and second). It’ll probably come down to who’s swinging the bat well, but the fact that one of them is a switch-hitter will probably help.

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The Salukis lost their entire starting outfield from last year, but that is not the only concern for Callahan as he goes into the1996 season. Last season’s pitching performance weighs heavily upon the success of the team this season.

We hope our pitching’s improved, Callahan said. After last year, I’d like to think so.

The baseball team, in their fifth week of fall practice, need to find consistency before the season begins, Callahan said.

I think we need to work on consistency. Some days we’ve looked real good, and then some days we’ve looked real bad, he said. Good teams are consistent, and we haven’t shown that thus far.

Unfortunately, Callahan said the walk-on tryouts earlier this fall did not pan out, but part of that was due to fact he was not looking for anything in particular.

We didn’t feel like we had a need like last year when we were looking for a catcher and a pitcher, he said. There were guys we felt had a chance to play college ball some time; maybe at a junior college or a smaller four year school.

Even with the high turnover of his players, Callahan believes the term rebuilding year is a negative way to describe the team’s situation.

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We signed 18 new players, which is unusually high for baseball, but I don’t see that as a bad thing, he said.