The Eastern Michigan men’s baseball team clinched a spot in the Mid-American Conference tournament winning two out of three games against Buffalo on the road this weekend. The team lost the first game of the series in a 3-18 blowout score Friday, but won the next two games scoring 11-7 on Saturday and securing a come from behind victory of 4-3 on Sunday.
Head coach Jay Alexander was excited about the team’s ninth inning comeback. “Yeah absolutely, we played well all day today but just couldn’t get hits,” he said.
Alexander said, “We were hitting it hard and getting good contact on the ball, but we just couldn’t get a hit and had no holes in the outfield. We had Daniel Russell in the ninth come up and finally get us a hit and we just kept it going and got three more hits, and finally drove runs in to take it.”
Freshman second baseman John Rubino and redshirt freshman catcher Adam Dennison finished the game two for four hitting in the victory. Freshman pitcher Ryan Lavoie picked up the win (4-3) and junior pitcher Joe Battistelli getting his fifth save of the season.
The team bounced back after the strange loss Friday to a huge margin of 3-18. “It was just a game where they did literally everything right,” Alexander said. “They hit everything we threw at them and the wind was a solid 15 miles per hour and really wasn’t helping us. They got a big strong hitting team and they are one of the best hitting teams in the MAC, and they just played a lot better than us that game. We didn’t make errors though and played solid baseball they just beat us that game.”
The team will have one game against Kent State, who just won the regular season MAC title, and will finish the regular season on the road in a three game series against Toledo, which will decide where their seeding will be in the MAC baseball tournament.
“I am not sure where we will be in the seeding,” Alexander said. “We are playing Toledo to wrap up the season. We still have a chance to win the MAC West which would give us a better seed but we can’t be worrying about that; we just got to keep playing well.”
Toledo (15-8) is currently first in the MAC West with Central Michigan in second (14-9) and Eastern Michigan in third (13-10). With four regular season games remaining, the team still has the chance to move up in the standings.
Alexander said he was confident in his team during this final week of the regular season. “We have been playing great baseball lately. We just need to get timelier hitting earlier in the games, so we don’t have to fight from behind. We have been getting great pitching and good defense. We just need to be driving in hits in those two out situations and keep playing mistake free baseball and we got a shot to do damage.”
