The conference regular season is officially in the books now. The playoffs are set. Every team has seen their fortunes rise and fall somewhat over the course of the season. The Stock Report was meant to capture some of that in showing who was playing well and who was struggling. This will be the final one of the 2014 baseball season and feel free to look back through the other Stock Reports for a snapshot of how things looked every Monday of the season.
Stock Up
1. Connor McDavitt ’15 Centerfielder (Tufts) – Bates stole the first game of the doubleheader on Saturday, scoring two runs in the bottom of the seventh and one in the eighth to walk off with the win, but Tufts held them off in game two to secure hosting rights for the NESCAC championship. McDavitt had a huge role in that game from the get-go. He singled to lead off the game before stealing second as Matt Moser ’16 struck out for the second out of the inning. A Max Freccia ’14 single brought McDavitt home for the first run of the game. In the second inning, McDavitt struck again, singling home Nick Barker ’15 to extend Tufts early lead to three runs. McDavitt finished the day with two hits in what was his fourth straight mult-hit game. He has been superb at the top of the lineup getting on base at a .467 clip. Much of that comes from his 26 walks, four more than anyone else in the NESCAC. He also has twelve stolen bases, but has only five since April 12, while been caught four times in that span. The Tufts bats will come to the forefront this weekend and will face a tough matchup with whomever Amherst throws out in the first game.
2. Jed Robinson ’16 Starting Pitcher (Trinity) – Trinity dropped off the radar pretty early on by not winning any of their conference series. They lacked the starting pitching depth or power hitting to win enough games to make some serious noise, but they played better down the stretch winning seven in a row before falling to Wesleyan in their season finale. We wrote a few weeks ago about the talent already on the Trinity roster saying “the final weeks of the season will help the coaching staff identify those potential contributors.” Robinson fits that profile perfectly. He struggled in a few early season starts and ended up not starting a game in conference play. He did get the win in Trinity’s extra inning victory over Tufts, pitching 1.1 scoreless innings. After that he re-entered the rotation, winning his final three starts. His best performance came Saturday against Wesleyan when he held the Cardinals to two runs over seven innings in Trinity’s 4-2 win. Robinson was one of several silver linings to emerge down the stretch for the Bantams as they look to quickly get back to the top of the league next season.
3. Bates (19-15, 7-5) – They didn’t quite manage to pull off the shocking feat of sweeping Tufts and stealing NESCAC hosting rights, but they came very darn close. Down 4-2 in the second game on Saturday, Bates got the first two runners on in the sixth before stranding them and then had two runners on in the seventh with one out and their two best batters coming up. Unfortunately, neither Kevin Davis ’14 or Griff Tewksbury ’14 was able to deliver a big hit, but consider how Bates started the season with six straight losses and you see how improbable the situation was. One of the major reasons for that poor performance was their awful defense which had 25 errors through seven games. In their next 27 games Bates had only 29 errors. Even given how they have been trending upward in the last few weeks, their performance against Tufts surprised a lot of people around the league. The consensus is that Tufts, Amherst, and Wesleyan have separated themselves, but Bates is closing fast on that trio heading into the playoffs.
Stock Down
1. Middlebury Hitting – Almost anyway you slice it, this was the worst hitting team in the NESCAC. Not to say that the hitting was the only reason why Middlebury struggled, because their pitching wasn’t much better, but it at least offered some decent performances. The only bright spot in the lineup was senior leadoff hitter Alex Kelly ’14. As soon as Dylan Sinnickson ’15 and Hunter Merryman ’15 announced that they weren’t going to be playing baseball, we knew the lineup was going to struggle, but Kelly was left almost without any support. Kelly had 14 more total bases and 11 more runs than anyone else on the Panthers along with the highest batting average and slugging percentage. With Kelly graduating, players who flashed promise like Max Araya ’16 and Jason Lock ’17 will have to become much more consistent in order for Middlebury to improve.
2. Andrew Vandini ’16 Infielder (Amherst) – In the weekend preview for April 18 we highlighted Vandini as an under appreciated cog of the Amherst offense. Since then he has not had multiple hits in any of his last twelve games. In fact that very weekend he went 1-15 from the leadoff spot. That prompted him to move from first to the two hole where he continued to struggle. He has been dropped down to near the end of the lineup in what has been part of a reshuffling of the Amherst offense as a whole. His season performance is still very respectable considering he has a .412 OBP, but he is representative of a perceptible drop in Amherst’s play in the last few weekends of conference play. They played well this weekend winning all four games, but both games against Colby were close fought battles. In the second game a Connor Gunn ’16 single scored two to give Amherst the walk-off 4-3 win. Vandini and the rest of the Jeffs have to pick it up just a little bit to repeat last years run.
3. Kyle Slinger ’15 Starting Pitcher (Tufts) – Given how dominant Slinger was pitching for most of the season, it isn’t a surprise that teams have started to hit him just a little bit. It started with Bowdoin tagging him for two runs in seven innings. That might not seem like cause for concern, but it was the most anyone had hit against him in weeks. The downward trend worsened when he let up three runs and eight hits against Bates. Those aren’t bad stats, but he only lasted five innings, forcing the Tufts bullpen to throw four innings. Tom Ryan ’15 and Mike Moser ’16 weren’t up for the task as they let up the lead. It is clear that Slinger has to be better this weekend for Tufts to win it all. A great long start by him will have the domino effect of causing the rest of the pitching staff to be fully rested for just a few games.
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