After winning the America East Tournament two years ago and playing in the NCAA Tournament, the University of Maine’s injury-ravaged 2024 baseball team hit rock bottom by being the only one of the seven league teams to miss the six-team tournament last season.
But the Black Bears have bounced back in dramatic fashion and have all but sewn up a spot in the tournament with six conference games still left on their schedule.
And there was certainly pressure entering the season on the Black Bears to make next month’s tournament because they are hosting it at Mahaney Diamond in Orono on May 20-24.
UMaine won its fifth consecutive conference series over the weekend, taking two of three from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, sandwiching 1-0 and 7-5 wins around a 10-6 loss.
UMaine is now 12-6 in the conference and tied with 10-5 Bryant in winning percentage (66.7) atop the league standings.
The two teams will play a three-game series against each other in Rhode Island this weekend.
Bryant is coming off a three-game set against last place Albany. Every team in America East makes the conference tournament except for the last place team.
Albany is now 3-12 in the conference and even if the Great Danes won their last nine games and UMaine dropped its final six, UMaine would win the tie-breaker by virtue of its three-game sweep of the Great Danes.
The only way UMaine would not get in is if there was a three-way tie and it lost the tiebreaker, but the odds of that happening are astronomical.
The next goal for UMaine is to finish in the top two of the conference to ensure a first-round bye.
“We’d like to be that top seed and we have a chance to do it,” said UMaine head coach Nick Derba.
Four freshmen played integral roles in Saturday night’s 7-5 win over NJIT.
Third baseman Evan Menzel and left fielder-second baseman Aidan Bardi each went 3-for-5. Menzel belted a two-run homer and also added two singles, while Bardi had a double and two base hits.
Menzel scored two runs and drove in two and Bardi scored a run.
Quinn Murphy delivered a run-scoring single and also scored once. Reliever Tommy Martin tossed three innings of one-hit shutout baseball to earn his first college save. He walked two and struck out one.
Murphy came on to play left field and Bardi played second after starting second baseman Myles Sargent suffered an ankle injury early in the game.
UMaine was already without cleanup hitter Drew Reynolds, who suffered a hamstring injury in the series opener and missed the last two games.
“We went out and beat a really good team without two of our best players,” said Derba. “That was good to see.”
Sargent, who is hitting .362, leads the team in runs-batted in (40) and is tied for the lead in homers (seven), could return for the Bryant series according to Derba. The coach is hoping to get Reynolds back in 10 days. Reynolds is hitting .303 with four homers and 33 RBIs.
‘We took care of business, strung some hits together and some guys stepped up big. Our depth took over,” Derba added.
Redshirt junior lefty Caleb Leys pitched a five-hit gem in the seven-inning 1-0 win, allowing five hits and no runs over the seven innings with five strikeouts and two walks. He is now 5-1 and has allowed only two earned runs over his last 35 innings.
Menzel doubled and scored the game’s only run on Sargent’s two-out single in the second inning.
The NJIT Highlanders pounded out 15 hits in their 10-6 victory in the second game of Friday’s doubleheader with UMaine starter Colin Fitzgerald surrendering nine hits and seven earned runs in just four innings. He struck out eight.
Fitzgerald has now given up 21 earned runs over his last 23 ⅔ innings but he has struck out 29.
Derba said he isn’t worried about Fitzgerald, a former first team All-America East pitcher who missed all of last season due to injury.
The coach said his high number of strikeouts reveals that he “obviously has some decent action on his stuff” from the mound.
“He’s getting closer to being more of his dominant self. He is a few pitches away from being an ace who can give us six or seven innings and allow just two to four runs,” said Derba.
Derba likes the position his team is in but said it isn’t clicking on all cylinders yet.
“We aren’t playing our best baseball. Hopefully, we can start peaking over the next few weekends and carry it through the conference tournament,” he said.
