Weekly Updates: Baseball

The Lafayette baseball team’s offensive struggles have continued during a five-game losing streak. The Leopards (2-14) have mustered a mere 14 hits over their past three games, including a two-hit effort at North Florida last Sunday. Opponents have 60 hits over the stretch with a 12-hit average.

The losing streak stretches back to a March 13 defeat at Temple University. The loss to the Owls was followed by a three-game sweep at the hands of the North Florida Ospreys, and culminated in a 6-0 shutout against Wagner. 

Lafayette has scored a total of 10 runs during that stretch, an average of only two per game. Five of those runs came at once in the series opener against North Florida. Their opponents, on the other hand, have scored 37 with a 7.4 run average. 

Lafayette has a .230 batting average this season, and opponents are batting .336.

 The last lead that Lafayette held was the season opener against North Florida on March 17. They carried a 3-2 lead into the fourth inning before the Ospreys took the lead for good in the bottom of the inning off a two-run homer from North Florida junior Corey Bass. 

The most recent ballgame against Wagner brought Lafayette to Staten Island to face the Seahawks. Wagner shut the Leopards down completely, limiting them to five hits and no runs throughout the course of the game. Although the pitching staff only gave up seven hits over the course of the game, five of those came in a four-run fourth. That was more than was needed to off the offensively deficient Leopards, but the Seahawks mustered two more runs of insurance in the seventh just for good measure.

Lafayette will try to stop the bleeding this weekend with a four-game series against UPenn. The first two games will be played in Easton, the first time the Leopards will have played at home all season. They’ll dip to Philadelphia on Sunday to close out the series against the Quakers before starting a key home stretch where they’ll play 16 of their next 17 in Easton. The one away game is at La Salle, in Philadelphia.

Patriot League also gets its start in the tail end of March, with the Leopards taking on Lehigh at home for a four-game stretch. The home slate also contains a four-game series vs. Holy Cross.

 

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