Medford’s baseball appearance brings more weekend focus on Green Bay

With Medford’s American Legion Post 147 baseball team qualifying for the Class AA state tournament in dramatic fashion Monday night, there are now two reasons for sports fans from here to pay attention to the Green Bay area over the next few days.

There’s plenty to read in this week’s pages about the baseball team’s success in the regional tournament it hosted Friday through Monday, so we can keep the discussion here brief.

In nearly 30 years of covering local sports, you reach points where you feel like you’ve seen it all. But you know what never gets old? Watching teams become teams. And we saw a lot of that this weekend with Medford’s baseball bunch.

Legion baseball is a different animal. Player availability varies from game to game over the summer, the 19U age range allows some high graduates from the previous year to be eligible and teams have different approaches when it comes to their programs.

Some will use older guys and place a lot of importance on winning. Some use it purely as a developmental tool for their community’s high school program. Neither approach is wrong. If you’re playing a game, you play to win, right? Medford tends to lean toward the developmental side, but it will use eligible grads if they commit to playing, especially at tournament time.

In this case, graduated seniors Ty Metz and Logan Baumgartner lent a helping hand in eating up some huge pitching innings to start and finish Medford’s five-game run over the weekend. But most of the heavy lifting in a 4-1 weekend was done by players who will be the core of the Medford Raiders’ 2024 varsity team. Watching them build a never-saydie identity was pretty cool.

Losing the first game in a post-season Legion tournament is rarely good. It puts you behind the eight-ball because it means you’re going to have to win at least one extra game to get to the final and pitching depth is an absolute must. Medford pieced together some pretty strong pitching over the weekend, even in the 8-1 first-round loss to Rhinelander. The pitching wasn’t poor in that game.

The way guys stepped up in key situations offensively and with big plays defensively as the tournament progressed is a good sign for, not only next baseball season, but for the entire school year with this group. They did what they had to do for themselves and for each other to win the regional tournament in exciting fashion. All of them are multi-sport guys. They’ll be teammates in sports like football, cross country, wrestling and basketball in the next 10 months and they talked post-game Monday about how they enjoy battling together.

With a generational talent like Baumgartner moving on to bigger and better things, Medford may already be finding some leaders emerging and finding players who aren’t afraid to be big in the big moments.

Good luck to Post 147 in Ashwaubenon!

*** The other focus on Green Bay is the start of training camp for the Packers. Again, you’ll be inundated with Packers’ news and updates about Jordan Love’s every move well into the regular season, so we can keep the initial Packers’ discussion brief as well this week.

Love’s progress as the new starting quarterback obviously will be a huge factor in how the Packers do in 2023. And God forbid, if he gets hurt, how would the Packers stay afloat with Danny Etling, Sean Clifford or Alex McGough at quarterback?

But there are several other storylines to watch during the pre-season period that will be important factors to any success the team will have to start this new era.

Along with Love, the development of the receivers and tight ends will be crucial. Do Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs build off the flashes they showed while fighting through injuries last year? Can Samori Toure work his way into prominence in his second year? What about this year’s second-round draft pick out of Michigan State Jaylen Reed? The top pass catchers at tight end are likely to be rookies Luke Musgrave and Tyler Kraft.

The Packers have the youngest and, by far, the cheapest receiving group in the NFL. Mistakes will be made likely leading to interceptions that may or may not be Love’s fault from time to time. Keeping those to a minimum will be important. On the flip side, having this young group develop and build chemistry with a similarly young quarterback could be an awesome thing to see over the next year or two.

Speaking of cheap, the Packers chose to draft kicker Anders Carlson rather than re-sign the franchise’s all-time leading scorer and highly reliable Mason Crosby. It feels like a big mistake. Can Carlson prove doubters wrong?

This certainly won’t be answered in the pre-season, but it will be interesting to see how the Packers use running back Aaron Jones in 2023. Plain and simple, he didn’t get the ball enough last year, whether that was a result of play calling by Matt LaFleur or play changing by Aaron Rodgers. As much as you don’t want to beat Jones up with too many carries, he and Watson are the offense’s most dynamic play makers. The ball needs to be in their hands. To me, how big of a year Jones has is one of those top determining factors in how the team will do. A healthy offensive line that has weekly stability would go a long way to making the running game work.

The $5 million pay cut Jones took to stay in Green Bay isn’t right because Aaron Jones is one of the finest human beings you could have representing your team.

Finally, I’d say the biggest storyline outside of Love’s progress is the scrutiny defensive coordinator Joe Barry will be under. Now, more than ever, Green Bay needs its defense to be something more than a unit that is just good enough to keep the team in games so the quarterback can save them. It has to be a primary reason Green Bay wins games. That means putting your stars –– like Jaire Alexander –– in positions where they can impact games, being more aggressive and less predictable with zone defenses and, for heaven’s sake, at least slowing down opponents’ running games.

It won’t help if Rashan Gary and Eric Stokes aren’t ready for the start of the season as they come off serious injuries, but I count eight players on this defensive roster that were one-time first-round draft picks by the Packers. It’s time a coordinator figures out how to make this unit perform to its ability.

All that being said, there is something exciting and refreshing about this new era. I could see this regular season ending up anywhere from 4-13 to 10-7 with an NFC North title. Let the newest chapter in Packers history start to write itself.

Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.