Baseball Struggles Continue

The good news is that the Lafayette baseball team picked up their first wins of the season last weekend. The bad news is that their run differential for the season thus far still sits at a dismal 99-58.

The Leopards (2-10) played a total of four games at Maryland Eastern Shore last Saturday and Sunday. They entered the weekend with a winless 0-7 record, still only slightly worse than UMES’s 1-11 mark.  They dropped the first contest 10-3 after surrendering all of the opposing runs over a four-inning stretch. Zach Gross ‘15 led the Leopards offensively with two hits and two RBIs, but sophomore left-hander Toby Schwartz (0-3) and the rest of the pitching staff left a hole too deep for the already struggling Leopards offense to climb out of.

Seniors Andrew Ruck and Brad Hopek were both 2-for-4 in the loss, while Jeff Fleetwood ‘14 led the Hawks with a 3-for-5 effort.

The next matchup, the evening edition of the doubleheader, would prove to be the end of a long 15 days for the Leopards. Things looked bleak for the boys in maroon and white after the Alex Farina ‘15 surrendered a five-run fifth inning, which gave UMES a 6-2 lead. But the Leopards would bounce back, gaining five runs over the next two innings to earn their first win of the season.

Sunday’s doubleheader was a near replay of the first two contests. The Leopards dropped the first matchup 5-4, but had a rare offensive explosion in the afternoon edition to gain a 15-1 win. It was the first time all season that they had exceeded six runs.

Lafayette closed out the stretch of action by returning to eastern Pennsylvania for a matchup at Temple in Philadelphia. The Leopards took an early 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning, but the Owls slowly chipped away at the Leopards over the next seven innings. The runs did not come in droves, with no more than two runs being scored in any of the first seven innings, but when the day ended, the Leopards were left staring at yet another loss, this time by the score of 10-3. First-time starter Ari Kaufman ‘16 made his first collegiate start, while Temple’s Matt Hockenberry ‘15 earned the win for the Philadelphians.

The Leopards play a three-game series at Jacksonville this weekend against the University of North Florida.