The Wesleyan varsity baseball team (9-3 NESCAC, 23-13-1 overall) took full advantage of this weekend’s opportunity for a pre-playoff tune up. Playing intra-conference (though not intra-divisional) rival Trinity College, Wesleyan swept a double header against the Bantams (8-4 NESCAC, 21-17 overall) and looked more than ready to head into the playoffs with a fire lit beneath them. The Bantams are the number-one seed in the NESCAC East, while Wesleyan is the number-one seed overall. The clash of these two titans ended up being rather lopsided, as the Cardinals beat the Bantams.
Game one in Hartford had the potential to be a let down. After clinching playoffs just the previous weekend against Amherst, who could blame the Cardinals if they simply didn’t bring it against Trinity? Any wavering thoughts or pervasive doubts were washed away quickly. After the top half of the first inning, the away team was up 3-0. By the fifth, the lead had grown to 5-1, and in the seventh, it stretched to 8-1. Despite a heroic effort by Trinity in the last two innings, the first game ended 8-6 in Wesleyan’s favor.
On the mound, many familiar faces seemed to come and go. Nick Cooney ’15 started the game and pitched four innings without allowing an earned run. He struck out five batters. He gave way to Wilson Flower ’16, who pitched three and a third innings, ceding two runs and striking out two. After Flower came Kai Kirk ’16, who pitched two thirds of an inning and gave up a run. The game was closed out by Sam Elias ’15, who gave the Cardinals an inning of work in which he struck a guy out and gave up no earned runs.
The offense was led by the three, four, and five hitters, Donnie Cimino ’15, Sam Goodwin-Boyd ’15, and Jonathan Dennett ’15. The heart of the order combined for 6 of the team’s 10 hits, and seven of the eight runs.
Cimino went 1-4 with two runs scored. Goodwin-Boyd went 2-5 with three runs scored and an RBI. Dennett was the true star of the day, going 3-4 with two runs, two RBIs, and a double. Also contributing was Guy Davidson ’16, who smacked a double himself while going 2-5 with four RBIs.
The story of the second game was similar to that of the first. Several talented Wesleyan pitchers split time relatively equally on the mound, and the offense came through when it needed to. Jimmy Hill ’14 started the game and pitched well, going five and a third innings without letting up a run. Gavin Pittore ’16 took over for him and pitched two innings. He allowed four runs, but none of them was earned due to errors. Andrew Hove ’15 pitched the final two thirds of the eighth inning and secured the win as the Cardinals rallied in the top of the ninth. Elias picked up his third save of the year after pitching an unblemished ninth. The Cardinals went into the ninth inning down 4-3 but scored three runs to win the game by a healthy 6-4 margin. Cimino and Dennett were joined by familiar face Andrew Yin ’15 as the offensive catalysts on the day. Yin went 3-5, Cimino went 2-4, and Dennett went 2-4 while contributing two runs and an RBI, one run, and one run, respectively.
In the first game against Trinity, Yin’s hit streak came to an end as he went 0-5, ending the prodigious 29-game collection in which he had amassed hits. This meant that he was unable to surpass the school record for hits in a season that he had managed to tie last week. Despite the setback, in the second game of the double header he smacked three hits to take sole possession of one of the most storied records a baseball team can have: most hits in a season. Yin currently holds Wesleyan’s record with 63.
The Cardinals now look ahead to the playoffs, where they will face the #2 seed in the NESCAC West.
“Bowdoin’s strength this year has been their pitching,” said pitcher Chris Law ’14. “They aren’t the best offensive team, but they have a couple great pitchers.”
The statistics corroborate this, as Bowdoin has given up the second-least runs in the league despite playing three more games than Amherst (who has given up the least). Judging by those numbers, the conference tournament that Wes hosts this weekend could be a low-scoring affair if Bowdoin controls the pace, but when the league’s best offense is involved, rarely do games stay low-scoring.