By TENAJH SWEETING

Tribune Sports Reporter

tsweeting@tribunemedia.net

WITH a little under two weeks remaining until the official start of the sixth Caribbean Baseball Cup to be hosted at the Andre Rodgers National Baseball Stadium, the Bahamas Baseball Association (BBA) named the management team for Team Bahamas yesterday during a press conference.

The baseball showdown slated for October 23-28 will feature a number of the region’s best clubs hailing from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Curaçao, US Virgin Islands and St Maarten.

The Bahamas’ coaching staff will feature a mix of veteran and new generation coaches, including Mario Ford, Kenneth Adderley, Trae Sweeting and Albert Cartwright Jr. Geron Sands will serve as team manager and Avard Hart is the team’s coordinator. Theodore “Teddy” Sweeting, BBA secretary general and CEO for the organising committee, expressed his confidence in the group selected to lead Team Bahamas at the sixth Caribbean Cup.

“We are extremely proud to be a part of the announcement of this management team who is going to do a tremendous in respect of Team Bahamas. This is the second time that we are hosting this event. The first one was hosted in our state-of-the-art facility in 2022 and we came in fourth and just missed out on the qualification of the CAC games… I am proud to say what is exciting here for the federation is that we have made a tremendous drop in respect to our ranking and that is because a lot of these young men here today who have managed our teams, who have facilitated and helped to put us forward,” he said.

While the management team has been named, the official team roster has not yet been released as officials are awaiting clearance from players’ respective teams, but expect to make an announcement within a week. 

Despite that, Sands remained optimistic that Team Bahamas will put on a good showing at home.

“We are definitely comfortable with where we are with the players. With these teams you have to get permission from their team so we are actually in the middle with a few more guys. We are trying to get our top senior guys to get in there to play…I am confident that we will have the best players out there. We will compete every game, we will win some games and we are gonna play good baseball,” the team manager said.

Team Bahamas is looking to jump a few more sports on the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) rankings this month. The host nation has jumped 12 spots to be currently ranked at no. 47 in the WBSC Baseball World Rankings which is the highest jump of any country this year.

According to team officials, some players expected to join the national team are Tahnaj Thomas, Chavez Young, Chavez Fernander and Evan Sweeting.

Sands is expecting the Bahamas’ pitching performance to be much better this time around thanks to experience.

“We have a lot of guys out there in college baseball that are pretty good pitchers. We have three or four professional guys out there Tahnaj Thomas, Evan Sweeting and Chevez Fernander so we have a solid four starters coming in. It has always been an issue that we try to compensate for every time that we play but this time I think the guys will be a little more seasoned, a little more ready and know what to expect so I think it is going to be a lot better than the last time,” he said. 

Sands thanked the BBA, NSA and Bahamian government for their support in preparation for the hosting of the sixth Caribbean Baseball Cup.

Competition will begin at 7pm every night for Team Bahamas. They will open the tourney against the US Virgin followed by games against St Maarten, Curaçao and Cuba. The group stage ends with a match against the Dominican Republic.

Medal games are scheduled for October 28.

Event tickets can be purchased via https://nsa-bahamas.com