America East Baseball News & Notes: Good Wins Last Week

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As the early part of the baseball season moves along, the America East Baseball Conference is starting to gain some footing on the diamond. The league picked up some good wins last week with UMBC having the best week of them all with three wins. UMass Lowell and Binghamton grabbed their first series wins of the young season. Things are starting to improve for the league and just in time too with America East play two weeks away. Let’s take a look at how last week went.

The Binghamton Bearcats (3-6) took two of three last weekend from Norfolk State. The Bearcats took a DH on Saturday winning game one 6-3. The bullpen would get the decision as Kyle Eskidsen (1-0) came out of the Bearcats pen to toss two innings of two-hit, one-run baseball. Jack Collins threw a scoreless ninth with two strikeouts to earn his first save of the year. SS Isaiah Corry supplied the offense with two hits and two RBI. 2B Nick Roseilli got a hit and two RBI. The Bearcats snapped a 3-3 tie in the top of the ninth when they scored three runs off of losing pitcher John Horton (0-1).

Game two saw the Bearcats use three pitchers and got a 7-0 shutout win over Norfolk State. Gabe Driscoll went the first 5.2 innings of six-hit, and six-strikeout baseball. He threw 80 pitches in his outing. Catcher Kevin Reilly had a three-hit, 2 runs scored, and one RBI game. Outfielders Tommy Reifler, Mike Gunning, and 3B Devon Bade all had two hits. Binghamton went for the sweep on Sunday but they came up a run short losing 6-5.

The UMass Lowell River Hawks (2-9) won their first season series over James Madison last weekend. After losing game one of a Saturday DH 11-5, coach Ken Harring called on one of his veterans to get the team on track. Matt Draper threw a complete game in game two giving up five hits, one earned run, 11 strikeouts, and three walks. He tossed 136 pitches to get the win. The performance earned him AE Pitcher of the Week honors The offense was supplied by SS Fritz Genther who blasted a first-pitch three-run HR in the third to help the River Hawks get their first win of the season 5-1. On Sunday, they took the series by a 12-5 score. Freshman Nick DiRito (1-0) went five, allowed five hits, four runs, two earned, four walks, and got four strikeouts. The bullpen went the final three of one-hit, one-run baseball. Genther was the offensive star with two hits, five RBI, and a grand slam HR in the third. OF Gerry Siracuse went 4-of-5, five RBI, two runs scored, and DH Frank Wayman had two hits, one run, two RBI, and a 2-run HR in the seventh. UMass Lowell did lose a mid-week series to nationally ranked Virginia Tech earlier this week.

UMBC (4-4) played a pair of games on Sunday. First, they defeated St. Peters 6-4 behind Luke Johnson (2-0) who went six and gave up two hits, one earned run, walked three, and struck out four. 3B Matt Ryan had a three-hit, two RBI, one run-scored game. One of his hits was a triple. Then, they took down Delaware State 9-3. Nick Remy (1-2) got the win going five innings, three hits, one earned run, two walks, and four strikeouts. The middle of the order did the damage as OF Ian Diaz, C, Tony Krueger, 1B Leewod Molessa, and Ryan all had two hits apiece. The Retrievers had a mid-week game vs Big-10 Maryland and lost 12-6. A five-run third was the difference. Molessa was the AE Rookie of the week as he went 7-of-13, 3 RBI, 2 runs scored, and one XBH. He was perfect in the field going 12-for-12 at first base.

The Maine Black Bears (3-6) lost two of three to Winthrop. However, they do have the AE Player of the Week in 2B Quinn McDaniels who slashed .625/.812/.625 in the series. He hit two home runs, two doubles, three RBI, five runs scored, and a base on balls. One interesting stat is he drew more walks on the weekend (7) than he recorded outs (3). He is leading the league in hitting with a .480 batting average, slugging at .920, on-base percentage at .0.723, and OPS at .1.643. He also leads in runs scored with 18, and in walks with 20.

Next week we’ll look back at how this weekend goes for the America East Conference.