A 6-3 victory in the finale of the baseball team’s three-game intrasquad series over the weekend gave Team Wolf the series, two games to one.
“It was a productive weekend for the whole team,” junior third baseman Andrew Ciencin said. “For the most part, our pitchers threw strikes and that’s what we are looking for this year—pitchers going after people and competing and I think that’s what they did this weekend.”
All three games went seven innings instead of the customary nine. The difference in game length wasn’t the only thing unusual about Sunday afternoon. As players did a year ago, they took batting practice dressed not as baseball players, but in Halloween costumes as superheroes and villains.
“We started that last year,” Ciencin said. “We didn’t tell coach [Avent] because we didn’t know how he would react to it. We thought he would be pretty upset with the idea but he actually liked it and wants to make it a tradition now.”
Ciencin said he was pleased to see the support his team received from the student body.
“There was a pretty good fan turnout,” Ciencin said. “We’re trying to get our program back to the level we want it to be and having support from students goes a long way.”
In the finale, Pratt Maynard led the way for Team Wolf with four RBI on a three-run triple and an RBI sacrifice fly. The starting pitcher Sunday for Team Wolf was Rob Chamra, while Cory Mazzoni got the start for Team Pack. Neither hurler finished the fourth inning, as all nine runs in the game came in the third and fourth innings.
Strong performances out of the bullpen by a number of relievers kept both teams off the scoreboard over the final three innings Sunday. For the winning Team Wolf, no pitcher had more to do with the victory than freshman D.J. Thomas, who gave up one hit and no runs in 2 2/3 innings. Chris Overman and Felix Roque also helped preserve the shutout. For Team Pack, Rey Cotilla, Mike Clark and Nate King came on in relief of Mazzoni and held Team Wolf scoreless the rest of the way.
“Josh Easley did a terrific job [Friday] of keeping us off balance and keeping us guessing the whole game,” Ciencin said. “I thought D.J. Thomas did a great job of coming in and not giving up any runs. Rob Chamra had a couple walks, but at the same time, he got ground balls when he needed to. For the most part, our pitching did really well this weekend and they all stepped up.”
After poor fielding resulted in both teams combining to commit seven errors in the opener Friday evening, Ciencin said he was pleased to see his team play better defense Saturday and Sunday.
“There were a bunch of errors that happened Friday night,” Ciencin said. “But to bounce back and not make an error in the next two games, that was pretty big.”
