Pirates face eight-game road stretch

By Brian Bailey
©2016 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

Chalk up another series win for East Carolina as the Pirates took two out of three from American Athletic Conference preseason favorite Houston.

In a battle of nationally-ranked teams the Pirates took the first two games of the series before falling on Sunday. The series outcome was enough to boost ECU up three spots to No. 16 in the D1Baseball.com rankings.

Sweeps are hard to come by, especially in a league as tough as the American Athletic Conference. Still, losing 6-1 on Sunday was a tough pill to swallow for ECU coach Cliff Godwin.

“If you watched the game you know we made four errors, we walked guys, made errors in the same inning, gave up multiple runs,” Godwin said. “The only positive that I can take out of today was the freshmen pitchers and Davis Kirkpatrick came in and threw zeroes… you know those freshmen especially didn’t look like freshmen today.”

Pirate lead-off hitter Parker Lamm had a couple of hits on Sunday, as did Dwanya Williams-Sutton. Still, the offensive punch just wasn’t there in the series finale.

“We played pretty well the first two days,” said Lamm. “I mean nobody likes to lose. It doesn’t matter if it’s going for a sweep or not. I mean it’s frustrating because you got them right there, but they’re a great team and they came ready to play today and we didn’t.”

The Pirates took the opener behind big Evan Kruczynski, who is quickly rising to the top as far as pitchers in the American are concerned. Kruz struck out a season-high eight batters in seven innings of work on Friday in the 3-1 win.

Bryce Harman hit an early home run and was later ejected for colliding with the Houston catcher on a play at the plate. It was a most eventful night for Harman, who would sit out Saturday’s game.

Jimmy Boyd was the star on Saturday as he outpitched Seth Romero of Houston. Boyd almost went the distance, going 8.2 innings, scattering six singles.

The Pirates gained control of a pitcher’s duel with a four run-sixth inning. Williams-Sutton had the key hit, a two-out, two-run double down the left field line.

The AAC on Monday gave Boyd its pitcher of the week award for his sterling performance.

East Carolina now gets set for a two-week stint on the road. The Pirates are at Elon this evening before visiting Tulane in league play this coming weekend. The Pirates then head south to UNC-Wilmington to start the next week before visiting Memphis that weekend.

The series win over Houston could pay big dividends down the road. Both the Pirates and Cougars should be in the championship hunt. Any tie-breaker between the two goes to the Pirates with the series win. Essentially it’s now a two-game lead for the Pirates over the Cougars.

It’s early of course. The likes of Cincinnati, Tulane, Central Florida and others will likely have a say in how things go down the road.

To show you how even the conference is, the first weekend of play didn’t include a sweep. ECU, UCF, Cincinnati and Tulane all won their respective series and stand tied at the top of the standings after the first weekend of league play.

“It’s not like a weekend you can look up and say, ‘Hey, you know, we are going to win the series and we’re going to sweep a team,’” said Godwin. “I mean everybody is good in this league. If you don’t play your best baseball you’re going to lose. The teams are very good. We are very good, but everybody in the league is very good.”

First up is Elon, a team that has already beaten East Carolina this season.

“It’ll be a challenge on Tuesday,” Godwin continued. “It’s always is, even back when I played. It’s tough to play Elon and you know you never get a call there. They’re going to be up for us. They’ve already beat us one time, so you know some guys who are not normally used on the mound will have to be, and have to pitch on Tuesday and we will need to play well to win.”

Playing well and getting better on a daily basis is Godwin’s recipe for success on the diamond.

BB

E-mail Brian Bailey