Baseball Falls Behind Early, Can’t Recover
BY COLIN SMITH

The Oberlin baseball team has been discovering just how hard it is to come back. The Yeomen lost three games at Wooster over the weekend of April 21 and 22, and lost another on Wednesday to Baldwin-Wallace at home. In the four losses, which extended Oberlin’s losing streak to 19 games and dropped their record to 2-27, Oberlin surrendered a combined 28 runs within the first three innings, creating holes they couldn’t climb out of.


(photo by Brad Coryell)

“We just keep having one bad inning and it seems like it is always early, so we are always playing from behind,” Head Coach Eric Lahetta said.
The Yeomen showed some progress in the series with Wooster, which was ranked 13th nationally in the latest NCAA Division III coaches poll. After being shut out 13-0 on two hits in the first game on Saturday, Oberlin scored a pair of runs in the second game, and five in Sunday’s game.
Wooster starter B. J. Thomas was dominant in Saturday’s shutout. He pitched a complete game and walked only one while striking out 11. His offense provided him with more than enough support, hitting first-year Peter Wyatt, Oberlin’s starter, for 10 runs on 13 hits in four innings. They added three unearned runs off of reliever first-year Robert Smith.
In the second game Wooster jumped ahead with four runs in the first and added six more, all off first-year Troy DeWitt, before Oberlin finally got on the scoreboard. Wooster had held Oberlin scoreless for 12 innings before first-year John Damron drove in first-year Chris Bamat with a fielder’s choice in the sixth. DeWitt would score later in the inning on a wild pitch, for Oberlin’s second run of the series. Wooster held Oberlin scoreless in the seventh to win 10-2.
The Yeomen got off to a good start in Sunday’s game. With the bases loaded and nobody out in the first, DeWitt singled, scoring senior Chris Irish and sophomore Zach Pretzer. First-year Chris Bamat came in to score on a Damron sacrifice fly, giving Oberlin a 3-0 lead.
“I’m really happy with the way the top of the order is hitting,” Bamat said of the Oberlin top four combination of Irish, Pretzer, himself and DeWitt. The four are hitting a combined .305 and have scored 65 runs and driven in 48. “The bottom half [of the order] is starting to come around,” Bamat added.
Wooster came right back in the bottom of the first, however, knocking out starter Damron after just a third of an inning in which he surrendered 10 runs. Smith and Pretzer pitched well in seven and two-thirds innings of relief, surrendering five runs. The Yeomen added two more in the seventh on a wild pitch and an RBI double by Bamat, but lost 15-5.
“I thought we played pretty well,” Lahetta said of the series, “Wooster is one of the best teams in the country and they showed that by beating Division I Akron last week.”
On Wednesday the killer inning was the third. Wyatt had given up just a hit and two walks through the first two innings, but Baldwin-Wallace broke out with seven runs on five hits in the third. Meanwhile, Baldwin-Wallace’s pitching was able to hold the Yeomen to two hits through the first seven innings.
Oberlin’s only runs in the game came in the eighth. First-year Ian Haynes and Pretzer drew back-to-back walks to open the inning, and Damron tripled them home. Bamat followed with a walk, but both he and Damron were left stranded as Baldwin-Wallace retired the next three Yeomen in order.
“Any time you dig yourself a hole, you have to play perfect to get out of it,” Damron said of the game.
On a positive note, the Yeomen made just one error in the game after committing eight in the Wooster series. “Our defense is looking a lot better. We’ve cut down on a lot of errors,” Bamat said.
“We have to get something going,” Lahetta said, “We need to crank out some wins in the next two weeks to give us some momentum for next year.”
The Yeomen will have plenty of opportunities in the next few days. They are scheduled to play double-headers on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Saturday they will face Denison, who is 15-15 this season. The games on Sunday and Monday are make-ups from earlier in the season against Penn State-Behrend (14-20) and Thiel (8-22). 
“We’re definitely looking to get at least a couple games,” Bamat said of the weekend double-headers. “It’s definitely possible that we could take five or six [of the team’s 11 remaining games].”

 

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