It might just have started to feel like spring, but the Northeastern baseball team has already played 21 games. This weekend featured a three-game series against the College of William & Mary, in which the Huskies lost all three games 1-0.

Offensively, the biggest issue for the Huskies’ is consistency. They have had games where they can explode. The Huskies have scored more than 10 runs in three games so far, and nine in another. Recently, however, Northeastern hit a snag and hasn’t been able to score more than two runs in the last five of their last seven games.

Four starters have  batting average above a .275, which should be generating some offense. The cumulative batting average is a .253, which is not necessarily a number that suggests the Huskies should have been shut out for three of the past five games.

Unfortunately, these numbers were mainly accrued in a few outlier games in which the Huskies’ offense was phenomenal. More frequently, it has been average or below average. They can disappear at times and while they can get hits, they normally don’t come at the right times, and runners are left on base. The Huskies will need to bunch hits in order to pick up the offensive production, and they definitely weren’t able to do that in their weekend series.

William & Mary is the best team in the conference. Even so, it is sad that the Huskies couldn’t score on them in three separate games on their own home turf. The Huskies have a 12-11 overall record, but they are only 2-7 in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). Their only conference wins have come against Old Dominion University and George Mason University, who are ranked just above the Huskies at seventh and eighth in the CAA.

On the bright side, the Huskies have solid pitching, which has allowed them to keep most of their games low scoring. Kevin Ferguson has a 2.45 ERA in six starts and Nick Berger has a 3.38 ERA in six starts. But after that, the Huskies don’t have a third starter whom they can really rely on. Nick Cubarney has a 0.54 ERA in just 16.2 innings, so he might be able to start getting some more opportunities. He has had the fourth most playing time for Husky pitchers, so it’s looking like he’ll be really reliable.

The pitching and defense were the reasons that all the games in their five game losing streak were close. Each of them was a one run game, but the offense couldn’t capitalize on their defense performance.

The key to the Huskies’ success this season will come down to how good their offense can get. While the pitching has had some bad games, most of the time they’ve given up very few runs. They have to continue to do that, but more importantly, the Huskies have to take advantage of their stellar pitching by mirroring it behind home plate. The offense can produce, but the lack of consistency is what led to the five game losing streak.

It’s unrealistic to expect the pitchers to continue allowing only one to three runs a game for the rest of the season, and the offense has to be able to bail them out of those situations as they come, as well as earn wins when the pitching is that good. If the offense improves, the Huskies will perform well, but if the offense stays the same, it will be a frustrating season.

This early into the season, it is difficult to gauge where the Huskies rank in comparison to other teams in the conference. Six of the Huskies’ conference games were within one run. Northeastern won one of those and lost the most recent five, but turned things around in their last two non-conference games with 7-0 and 4-2 wins. The Huskies could either be unlucky in conference play so far, or they could be a team that just doesn’t perform when they need to the most. Hopefully, the Huskies just had a bad stretch of conference games that ended poorly. Still, the Huskies are not in a rhythm, and while they have potential if they can iron out some issues, it doesn’t look like they’ll be one of the better teams in the conference unless the bats get cracking in CAA games. In a couple of months they could be easily fighting for the eighth seed in the CAA tournament if they don’t.

– Chris Judd can be reached at [email protected]