Just like earlier this year, the Dutch Baseball Hangout would like to pay attention to the transactions in the Belgian Baseball Gold (BBG) League. The transaction period in Belgium ended at December 1, so time to start with the second blog post. This one is about the reigning champions of Belgium, the Hoboken Pioneers.
According to manager T.J. Antonacci, Hoboken Pioneers managed to keep last year’s flagship team together except for one player who has decided to hang up his spikes: Sebastiaan Vandensompele.
One player that joined the club during the corona-riddled season, Thomas De Wolf, decided to stick with the Pioneers. De Wolf and Dennis de Quint will be a nice 1-2 punch in the heart of the lineup.
Another (real) addition to the Pioneers BBG roster is young catcher Christoff Peeters. Christoff has left Brasschaat Braves to join the team from the South side of Antwerp.
Pioneers also managed to add a big name to the coaching staff of the BBG roster: former Belgian national team head coach Sven Hendrickx. Hendrickx will be Pioneers’ third base coach.
Knowing that starting pitcher Kenny van den Branden subscribed as a member of multiple Dutch champion Neptunus from Rotterdam, he could be quite a question mark. Kenny stated a while ago that he only subscribed to make sure that he could pitch for Neptunus in the 2021 season if he decided to do this. But according to Pioneers manager T.J. Antonacci, he has talked to Kenny and the latter is now fully committed to Pioneers for the 2021 season.
I would like to thank T.J. Antonacci for the time he took to answer my questions.
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