Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
The boys of summer are on a slide.
The Northeastern Huskies baseball team has hit a bit of a rough patch just over 27 games into their season. Heading into the Beanpot opener against UMass Amherst Tuesday evening, the Huskies had lost seven straight by a combined score of 64-23, and have been held to three runs or less in five of those contests. Losing Tuesday nights Beanpot pushed the streak to eight games, which was halted by 9-4 win at Friedman Diamond last night.
Part of this comes from the simple fact that the opposition they’ve faced over the past few weeks has been the best they’ve faced all season.
The first three games in the losing streak were to a Virginia Commonwealth team that was in desperation mode itself. The Rams entered the three-game series against Northeastern having lost six of their last seven as the season began to unravel around them. They came out swinging and took all three from the Huskies by an average of nearly six runs.
After a loss to Rhode Island on the road, Northeastern faced James Madison, the NCAA baseball expert-favorite to repeat as Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) champs a season after registering a 21-9 league record and a 42-19 record overall.
I still stand by my belief that “experts” are more often wrong than they are right, but one has to believe something on paper – whether it was their pitching, hitting or fielding – caught the voters’ eyes. Fan favorites are not fan favorites just because their uniforms are the most aesthetically pleasing.
To be fair, the Huskies started the season in a gear you couldn’t expect them to hold up all season. Following an 18-33 season, Northeastern was on pace for right around a 33-17 mark opening the season at 12-7. It takes different factors for such a sharp turnaround to take place.
Northeastern fans can certainly draw parallels to this slide and the slide experienced by the men’s hockey team earlier this season. After coming out of nowhere – a 1-7-2 start to be exact – to put together an eight-game unbeaten streak (7-0-1), the team won only six of their final 18 games to close out the season at 13-16-5. (But they beat BU to finish the season, and that counts for something, right?)
And then, of course, if you’re talking about “baseball” and “losing” in the same sentence, people in this town immediately draw connections to one team: the Boston Red Sox.
Unlike their fried chicken-eating, beer-guzzling baseball brethren down on Yawkey Way (yeah, still not over that), Northeastern’s slump seems to be a product of the traditional ups and downs of the season, as opposed to a college diet and frat boy mentality.
Much like the Red Sox, however, the Huskies need to get more out of their pitching staff. Three runs per game certainly aren’t enough from the offensive end, but it’s plenty if the pitching staff comes out and dominates opposing bats.
Pitchers like senior Andrew Leenhouts (5.16 ERA) and junior Dylan Maki (7.25 ERA) have to step up and put a stop to this losing streak. Considering Leenhouts is the ace of this staff – don’t think he doesn’t know all eyes are on him.
The other thing to remember is we’re only at the midway point of the season. The team has plenty of time to right the ship in time for a CAA tournament run at the end of June. This losing streak is equivalent to one a team in the majors might experience during August: It certainly won’t help your playoff chances, but it isn’t a death sentence.
This team has talent. They play in a difficult league and play a relatively difficult out of conference schedule. They’ll put wins on the board. It’s only a matter of time. And in case anyone forgot, they did jump out to a 12-7 start. Something other than pure luck and weak opponents got them there.
Stay tuned, because hope is not lost.
– Andy MacDougall can be reached at [email protected].
