Jared Sneed 2016-2019
A baseball program at a small school certainly has limitations. One of the potential limitations is the number of players available. It can be a challenge to have enough players for Varsity and Junior Varsity teams, and to have able players at all positions. Depth of players is really good for being competitive, but also to keep players motivated to maintain their spot and to encourage players to strive for a spot in the line up. Certainly over the years, our teams relied on players being able to fill in at multiple positions.
The epitome of a player who played multiple spots was Jared Sneed. Jared played for Lutheran from 2016 to 2019. Jared is the only player in my years to play all 9 positions in their career! Jared made great contributions to our teams over those years with his play on the diamond and off. He was a great student. I do not think I heard a negative word from him during those years. He never complained about moving from position to position, or anything else for that matter.
I first knew Jared from his Little League days. My son, Matthew Alter, was drafted to the same team as Jared at Franklin Township Little League. Jared’s father, Brent Sneed, was the coach. Brent and Jenny Sneed were great supporters of Lutheran Baseball. Jason Sneed, Jared’s older brother, also played baseball at Lutheran and graduated in 2015.
In his Little League days, Jared was primarily a catcher. It was clear that the Sneed family loved baseball, and Jared brought a lot of enthusiasm to the Program as a freshman. The timing for Jared to be a starting catcher at Lutheran was not good as another freshman, Noah Wood, was a really good catcher and would be the #1 catcher in his four years of baseball. Jared wanted to get on the field so he worked to find a spot, and what turned out to be spots! In reviewing Jared’s career and the positions he played, the chart below shows his appearances by position in the games played:
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
1B | – | – | 4 | 2 |
2B | – | – | 1 | – |
3B | – | – | 2 | – |
SS | – | – | – | 1 |
C | – | 6 | 1 | 11 |
LF | 3 | 3 | – | – |
CF | – | 1 | – | 1 |
RF | 4 | 11 | 21 | 16 |
P | – | – | 5 | 3 |
PR/CR* | 8 | 3 | – | – |
*Pinch Runner/Courtesy Runner
From going through the scorebooks this is what I found. It could be off a tad. I do remember a game in 2019 when the guys told me that Jared just needed to play shortstop to have played all 9 positions in his career. I had to make sure that happened. The game was in our Sectional versus Edinburgh or Southwestern.
Here are some other tidbits about Jared Sneed:
Jared and I were partners in 2018 and 2019 to lower the portable batting cage. I appreciated that he knew what he was doing and
we had good timing.
Jared got his first base hit against Morristown on 4-25-16.
His first pitching win was against Eminence on 4-22-18 as he pitched 5 innings, allowed 5 hits and 0 earned runs.
Against Hauser on 5-20-19 at Lutheran, Jared hit a home run in his first at bat. We were excited as it was Senior Night and Hauser was ranked #1 in 1A at the time. Low and behold, the base umpire called Jared out for missing 2nd base as he circled the bases. We were shocked with the ideas that Jared would miss the base; the umpire was supposedly watching, and then actually made that call. Jared insisted that he touched 2nd base. We lost that argument! But, we won the game.
My favorite game memory about Jared happened on 4-16-19 at Ritter. We really wanted to beat Cardinal Ritter. Our starting second baseman, Zach Mitchell, was on a college visit so Eli Boyd came up from JV and played second. Eli played really well in Zach’s place. Anyway, in the second inning a pop fly dropped between Eli and Jared, who was playing rightfield. It was my opinion that the ball should have been caught and that Jared should have taken charge and caught the ball. I am pretty sure I got on Jared pretty good after that half inning. That was a good thing about Jared; he heard the message and did not focus on how it was delivered! Soon after another pop fly went to about the same place and Jared came flying in and made a diving catch to save a hit! I was really proud of him in that moment. I believe I was complimentary to Jared after that catch! As we ended up winning that game 1-0 in 9 innings, that play was most likely game changing! Yea Jared.
Lutheran High School has had many really good baseball players. I am certainly grateful to those guys for their contributions. The majority of guys playing baseball worked very hard to get better and contribute their best when they got the opportunity to play. I really appreciated these players as they are the ones who made things work for our teams. I cannot think of anybody who worked harder than Jared Sneed. In his time, his ability and willingness to play whatever role was needed was invaluable.
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