Arizona baseball team already gearing for 2017

I walked through the foyer of the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility on Friday and saw the UA baseball team running the steep stairways to the press box. It’s 5½ months until the 2017 season opener. Not that coach Jay Johnson is letting off the accelerator. He got a recruiting commitment last week from Glendale Mountain Ridge lefty Matt Liberatore, a Class of 2018 prospect some believe will be the state’s No. 1 pitcher by his senior year. Liberatore struck out 39 batters for Mountain Ridge last spring and pitched in the state championship game as a sophomore. Johnson and the 2016 Wildcats will be honored by the Arizona Diamondbacks before the Sept. 18 game against the Dodgers at Chase Field. It’s probably the best spotlight the D’backs could provide; they will surely draw fewer than 2 million fans for the first time in franchise history, but the Sunday 1 p.m., game against the Dodgers is likely to draw in excess of 30,000. 

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