America East Baseball News & Notes: The Final Three Weekends

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Twelve games left in the regular season for everyone in America East baseball. Every game from here on in means that much more, as teams try to put themselves in position to be one of the four that will play for the conference championship at the end of May. Here is how the races look and the rest of the news in America East Baseball.

Don’t look now, but the hottest team in the league is NJIT. For the second straight weekend, the Highlanders took a series. Two weeks ago it was Stony Brook, this past weekend it was a sweep of UMBC. NJIT has won five in a row and eight of their last ten games. Their recent stretch of good play has put them in the hunt for the second spot in Division B. At 14-14, they are tied with Binghamton who stands at 12-12. It remains to be seen if the two fewer games that the Bearcats have played will be a good or bad thing. The good news for both teams is they will get the chance to settle it on the field in two weeks. Before that, however, both teams will have to take care of league business this week. The Bearcats will be home to play UMB while NJIT will hit the road to face Stony Brook. How these two teams play in these series will go a long way toward how the next weekend shapes up.

In Division A, Hartford has the top spot by a game in the loss column on Albany (13-13). The good news here is that the two teams will meet this weekend in Albany. Hartford (14-12) gained the number one spot in the division by taking three out of four last weekend from UMass Lowell. The highlight was a come-from-behind victory in game one of Sunday’s doubleheader. Down 7-1 in the bottom of the sixth of the seven-inning game, the Hawks staged a comeback against River Hawk pitcher Joshua Becker. Up to that point, he was throwing a one-hit game. Hartford would bat around and score eight times to take the lead and eventually win game one 9-8. They would take game two as well to complete the sweep. Albany faced Maine last weekend and would split the series with the Black Bears. Maine took two on Saturday and Albany did the same on Sunday.

All is not lost for both the Black Bears (10-11) and the River Hawks (11-15) who will meet this weekend in Maine. A series win by either team will put them back in the race for a playoff spot. A series loss, however, could spell doom for either team. The last time the two teams met it was Lowell who took the series winning three of four at home.

The Player of the Week is Julio Marcano of NJIT. The senior shortstop from Katy, Texas swung a hot bat in the series vs UMBC. His slash line of .528/.600/.1.308 speaks for itself. He had seven hits in the series. six went for extra bases. including a game-tying three-run blast in the ninth inning of game two. Marcano drove in 11 runs and scored 10 times. He leads America East in home runs with eight, in sacrifice flies with four, and is second in runs batted in with 33. This is Marcano’s first weekly award.

The Pitcher of the Week is Binghamton’s Thomas Babalis. The left-handed sophomore has been good lately. Last week he threw a complete game shutout versus Stony Brook on Saturday. In that performance, Babalis allowed just two hits and held the Seawolves lineup to a combined .095 batting average. He struck out five and held Stony Brook without a run for the first time in 28 games. Babalis has a 3-3 record with a 2.87 ERA in seven starts, with three complete games and two shutouts. He will be key facing NJIT this week. For Thomas, this was his second Pitcher of the Week award in the past three weeks.

The Rookie of the Week is Evan Fox of Stony Brook. He hit .417 (4-for-12) in three games with a .462 on-base percentage. Fox hit his first career HR in game two of Saturday’s doubleheader. He drove in three runs and scored a pair in their series vs Binghamton. He has also been hit by pitch a lot. In fact, he is tied for the league lead with 11. This is Fox’s second Rookie of the Week award.

Next week we will have more from America East Baseball.