Baseball Falls to New Low with Weekend Sweep

The Amherst Lord Jeffs prevailed over the Middlebury Panthers in a three-game series sweep this weekend at Forbes Field. The double-header on Friday, April 18 featured a 3-0 shutout win for Amherst and a 2-1 thriller that Amherst snatched in the tenth inning. Saturday’s contest slipped away from Middlebury and Amherst clubbed its way to an 11-3 win.

Despite the losses, Alex Kelly ’14 (6-13, two runs, RBI), Max Araya ’16 (3-8, 2 RBI, 2 BB, HBP) and Joe MacDonald ’16 (3-10, RBI) swung proficiently at the plate and hurlers Eric Truss ’15 and Cooper Byrne ’15 threw heat from the hill.

In the first game, the Panthers outhit the Lord Jeffs 9-4 but missed key opportunities to knock runners home. Middlebury was able to load the bases in the second and third innings, but undefeated Amherst slinger Dylan Driscoll wriggled out of the early trouble.

Wild pitches and throwing errors in the second and fifth inning led directly to all three runs for Amherst, but otherwise the defense was tight.

In the sixth inning, Garrett Werner ’16 bunted for a single and Matt Leach ’15 singled to right, but from that point on the offense puttered. At the end of the day, Middlebury would leave 12 runners on base but could bring none all the way around.
“We have been working on becoming a complete team,” Coach Bob Smith said. “Our defense is playing well now, and giving us a chance to win games if we can just score some runs.”

To improve the offense, Coach Smith wants smart situational hitting.

“Our emphasis this week will be on hitting, of course, and doing the basic things right like bunting people over and scoring people from third base when there are less than two outs.”

Hungry for revenge in the second game, Truss and the Panthers kept the Lord Jeffs knotted 0-0 until the fifth inning. An unfortunate bobble gave Amherst a sudden baserunner, who would eventually score on a two-out zinger down the right field line.

In the bottom of the seventh, Jason Lock ’17 legged out a leadoff double, then moved to third base on a bunt play. Lock scurried home on a wild pitch to tie the score.

The tenth-inning heroics ultimately belonged to Amherst, whose Tyler Jacobs lifted a ball over the leftfield fence for the deciding home run.

On Saturday, the weather warmed up but so did the Amherst bats, buoyed by an outgoing wind.

Taiki Kasuga of Amherst stepped up with the bases loaded and pinged a ball three-hundred and ninety feet to the centerfield fence that scored three, capping a five-run second inning.

Kelly was 4-4 at the plate for Middlebury, scoring two runs with his own legs and knocking one more home with an RBI double.

“Kelly has been awesome. He comes every day ready to play and I respect him a lot for that,” Smith said. “He puts a lot of the burden on his shoulders, and it is tough for him, but he has kept us in a lot of games.”

This Saturday, April 26, the Panthers will welcome fans to Forbes field for another double-header against Trinity College, followed by a doubleheader with Castleston St. on the road on Sunday. Middlebury also has a handful of weekday games next week, playing back-to-back doubleheaders on Tuesday, April 29 at Skidmore and Wednesday, April 30 at Plymouth St.

“We’ve made drastic improvements over the season and a lot of our more recent games could have gone either way with more timely hitting,” Byrne said. “I think we have many reasons to be confident going into next season if we can take some games over these next two weeks against good teams and prove to ourselves that we can do much better going forward.”