Maine

America East Baseball News & Notes: Maine Wins First Place Tilt

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This past weekend in the America East Conference, the first and second-place teams met for the first time this spring. The Maine Black Bears took two of three on the road from the Binghamton Bearcats to increase their lead in the league to two full games on everyone. UAlbany recorded their first league win of the season on Saturday in walk-off fashion, but could not take their series with UMass Lowell. The conference also did well in mid-week games leading into their league series. All in all, another good week of baseball in America East. Here is a look at how it went.

In the mid-week non-league games, the conference picked up four wins. On the weekend NJIT swept a series from Long Island University from the Northeast Conference. Lowell, UMBC, and Binghamton also posted victories. For the mid-week, the league went 4-3. NJIT was the busiest of all the teams playing five non-conference games. They finished this stretch with a 4-1 record. A very good mark considering that all five games were played on the road.

The main event of the weekend took place in Binghamton, NY as the Bearcats (19-12, 6-3) hosted the Maine Black Bears (17-12, 11-1). All three games were decided by one run with the Black Bears winning the first two by identical 5-4 scores. The Bearcats would take Sunday’s game by an 18-17 count in a wild late-morning game. Maine took game one on the strength of home runs by Quinn McDaniels in the third to left, then a 3-run blast to left-center by Jeremiah Jenkins in the eighth. Jenkins’s home runs off of John Lumpinski would turn out to be the game-winning hit. Both starting pitchers went seven. Colin Fitzgerald of Maine (six hits, four earned runs), and Thomas Babals (two hits, one earned run) for Binghamton. Maine’s bullpen would be better on Friday as Justin Baeyens went two scoreless innings to pick up his fourth save of the spring. On Saturday, Maine did it again. Trailing 4-3 in the seventh, they got home runs from Dylan McNary in the seventh and Myles Sargent in the eighth. Both long balls came off Bearcats relief pitcher Justin Rosner (1-2). Gianni Gambardeila got the win with four innings of two-hit shutout baseball to improve his record to 4-1. On Sunday, offense ruled the day as both teams did some heavy hitting. Maine had eight XBH on the day and Binghamton had three. Maine’s pitching staff walked nine batters, hit three, and threw four wild pitches. The top four hitters in the Black Bears lineup went a combined 15-for-20 with 12 runs scored and 14 RBI. Connor Goodman, McDaniels, and Jake Rainess had four-hit games. The Bearcats got a three-hit game from Nick Roselli and two-hit games from Kevin Gseli, Tommy Reifler, and Mike Stelrecht. Alan Henderson, the Bearcats’ fourth pitcher got the win (1-0) and Jack Collins got save number six. Luc Lawigueur (0-3) took the loss.

NJIT (13-20, 4-5) went on the road and swept a series from Long Island University by outscoring them 29-10. The Highlanders received good pitching from Joe Georgini who went seven and gave up four hits and zero runs on Sunday to move to 3-3 on the year. At the plate, SS Ray Ortiz went 7-for-9 with seven RBI and four runs scored in two of the wins. He also hit a couple of home runs in the series.

After a rough weekend on the road at UMass Lowell two weekends ago, the Bryant Bulldogs (15-16, 6-6) bounced back nicely with a series win over UMBC (15-17, 6-6). On Friday, the Retrievers took game one 6-5 taking advantage of a five-run sixth inning to get the win. Each team hit two home runs in the game. UMBC got a solid starting pitching performance from Luke Johnson (4-1) who struck out 11 in seven innings. Connor Kelly grabbed his first save of the year despite a two-run HR he allowed to Justin Hackett in the ninth. On Saturday, Brent Wichrowsk (3-1) struck out nine in five innings to get the win for the Bulldogs. Lucas Barnum had a big day with a 3-run HR in the first and an RBI double in the 8th. He had four hits in the afternoon. On Sunday, a pair of 3-run innings did the trick for the Bulldogs. Jake Gustin hit a 2-run HR to right-center in the sixth to help the cause.

The America East Player of the Week is Jeremiah Jenkins of Maine. In the series vs Binghamton, he slashed .555/.688/.1.556. He hit two home runs, one double, and one triple, with nine RBI. He was hit by a pitch once and walked five times. He is second in the league in hitting with a .394 average, leads in slugging with a .826%, and in on-base +Slugging with a 1.364%. He leads in RBI with 49, and in home runs with 13.

The America East Pitcher of the Week is Grant Vurpillant of NJIT. He struck out ten hitters over 6.2 innings of work. He did not walk a batter in any of his three appearances last week. He earned a save vs Rider by going 2.2 innings and striking out six, then earned a save over the weekend vs LIU with two more innings of shutout baseball. He also picked up a win in Friday’s opening game of the weekend.

The America East Rookie of the Week is Justin Hackett of Bryant. He went 3-for-10 with two home runs, three runs scored, three RBI, and a double in the series win over UMBC. His two home runs came in the first game of the series on Friday.

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