After struggling to start off the season, the Wesleyan baseball team righted the ship with a three-game winning streak to end their opening road trip in Arizona. The recovery from the slow start gives the Cardinals a 7-8 record as they head back north and look to begin their conference schedule.
Wesleyan opened up its southwest swing the right way on March 11 with a doubleheader against Albright College, handling their season debut with a pair of victories. Mike Barsotti ’12 set the tone in the opener for the Cardinals, striking out nine in six shutout innings en route to an 8-1 win, while Donnie Cimino ’15 went 3-4 at the plate with three runs as Wesleyan’s bats carried the team to a 15-5 final.
The momentum of this opening day did not carry over to the next slate of games for the Cardinals, however. Wesleyan began to wilt under the Arizona sun, dropping six of its next seven games. After dropping two in a doubleheader to Johns Hopkins on March 21, the Cardinals had a disappointing 4-8 record, and had been outscored by their opposition 84-39 over their last ten games.
Faced with the task of salvaging the final leg of their Arizona schedule, the Cardinals delivered in explosive fashion. Kyle Weiss ’12, Andrew Yin ’15, and Cimino made up the top of the order when Wesleyan squared off against Midland Lutheran and combined to go 10-12 with nine RBIs to power the Cardinals to a 16-5 win on March 23. Wesleyan was not done for the day, however, as the Cardinals blew out William Paterson by the score of 15-8 as well.
As well as they played in the two games before, the Cardinals stepped it up another notch before their final game in the desert against Thomas College. Barsotti didn’t let the ball out of the infield in getting through the top of the first. When Wesleyan came to bat, Chris Bonti ’13 would not be denied, driving in three runs with his second homerun of the season. With one frame in the books, Wesleyan was already rolling with a 4-0 lead. That was all the Cardinals would need, as Barsotti only let in three runs (two earned) and struck out eight over six innings, while the bullpen finished the job without letting in another run. But the Wesleyan hitting machine kept on humming, led by a 4 for 6 day at the plate for Bonti with 6 RBIs to carry the team to victory in a 19-3 drubbing.
As the Cardinals stepped onto their plane back north, they were no longer slumping but surging, dominating their opponents by a combined 50-16 margin over their past three games. The veterans are setting the tone for Wesleyan, with Barsotti leading the pitching staff with a 2.66 ERA and Joe Giamo G’11 pacing the team with 21 RBIs. But the biggest addition to the Cardinal dugout is Donnie Cimino, who has officially earned rookie phenom status. The freshman centerfielder leads the Cardinals with a .444 batting average and was named NESCAC Player of the Week last week before ever taking the field in conference play.
Cimino and company will get their chance to bring their winning ways up north and into NESCAC play on Saturday, March 31, when Wesleyan travels up to Maine to take on the Bowdoin Polar Bears.
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