Players in Frontier League baseball work on one-year contracts. If they do well, they are asked back.
Year 2 can be the springboard season.
After a strong initial go-round with the Washington Wild Things, relief pitcher Chad Coles picked up a team option from 2025 and will return to the bullpen this summer.
The Norwin and Youngstown State graduate came to Washington last May in a trade with York Revolution of the Atlantic League of Professional baseball.
Arm surgery forced him to put his pro career on hold after he initially signed with the Wild Things out of college.
The former Norwin ace who won a WPIAL title with the Knights as a junior and also was a 182-pound wrestler played in the MLB Draft League for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers in 2022 and was 3-3 there with a 4.26 ERA in 25 games.
But the hard-throwing right-hander found a groove when he began to stack outings. He touched the mid-90s mph and often got hitters to swing and miss.
Last season, he went 2-2 in 31 appearances with a 2.19 ERA in 37 innings. He allowed 20 hits, struck out 42 and walked 18, holding a WHIP of 1.027.
With York, he was 1-0 with a 6.28 ERA and 16 Ks in 14 1/3 innings.
Coles had a bad outing that skewed his numbers some. He faced three batters, hitting one and walking the other two against Joliet in the first game of a doubleheader.
A different reliever came on and allowed two of them to score after a long weather delay, charging the runs to Coles.
Smooth out that bump in the road, and Coles has a crisp 1.70 ERA.
Coles allowed a three-run homer in the next game, so five of the nine earned runs he surrendered were crammed into two innings — against four batters.
The Wild Things open the season May 7 at the Windy City Thunderbolts.
