Hoboken Pioneers – Dutch Baseball Hangout

On December 15, 2023, the transaction period in Belgium ended. Time to sum up the new players and leaving players for each Division 1 team. We continue with last year’s runner up: Hoboken Pioneers.

According to manager T.J. Antonacci, it was a quiet transfer period for the Hoboken Pioneers. The team retained all of last year’s roster, except for one player, Lieven Buerms, who hung up his spikes. In fact, the club signed more new coaches than players.

The only addition to the player roster is young and speedy shortstop Zion de Brauwer, who comes from Borgerhout Squirrels. In one-hundred-thirteen at-bats, Zion collected twenty-four hits, of which six doubles. So at-bat there is still room for improvement. On the defensive side, there is also room for improvement, with a fielding percentage of .882, but Pioneers will see potential in the Belgian U-23 national team player.

With Sven Hendrickx opting for coaching at the Belgian national team, Hoboken had to look for a new third base coach. They found one in Jordi Mertens, also coming over from Borgerhout Squirrels.

Pioneers also added a new hitting coach as they acquired Leon Lewis. Leon was one of the best hitters in Belgium when he played there, and has been involved with hitting clinics throughout the past years as well.

According to T.J., it is very well possible that Pioneers will acquire an import pitcher for the European cup, but that will be decided later this year.

I’d like to thank T.J. Antonacci for providing the much needed information for this blog post. He was hellpful as always. 🙂

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