Wesleyan: NESCAC Champs

A whirlwind 2014 NESCAC baseball season came to an end on a groundball to second with Wesleyan clinging to a two run lead. Tufts mounted a valiant comeback down six entering the eighth inning, but they had dug too much of a hole for themselves. The Jumbos had looked like the best team in the NESCAC for most of the season, but they came up short in the end. The real story was a Wesleyan team that completed a somewhat improbable run through the NESCAC regular season and tournament.

This was a Wesleyan team that never matched the gaudy stats of Amherst or Tufts, but proved for the millionth time that college baseball isn’t a game played on paper. The knack of winning close games is still one of the more less understood aspects of baseball, a sport that at times seems to be continually moving towards some type of statistical singularity. Wesleyan won games by never backing down in big spots. Yes I could talk all about the timely pitching from the entire pitching staff or the offense that featured talent from top to bottom, but that doesn’t really explain how Wesleyan won.

Baseball gets 3rd winning squeeze bunt of year as Will O’Sullivan plates Guy Davidson in bottom of 9th to beat Bates, 4-3, in NESCAC tourney

— wescores (@wescores) May 9, 2014

Winning just one game off of a squeeze in a season would be a notable feat, but having three is borderline absurd. Wesleyan is more than talented enough to win comfortably against lesser teams going 8-1 against the bottom three of the NESCAC West. When the talent level evens out, the Cardinals are able to do what many others teams can’t: be flexible. They aren’t tied to one particular way of playing baseball in order to win. They are just as comfortable hitting a couple three run homers to win a slugfest as playing small ball.

Wesleyan’s run differential last weekend was -6. -6! They won three very close baseball games, got blown out in another, and ended up champions. They didn’t win pretty, but they won. Since their 8-5 trip to Arizona, the Cardinals have gone 19-6. Of course that includes one stretch in the middle of the season when they went 13-1 meaning in their last 11 games they are only 6-5. They defy expectations and definition. We have been underselling Wesleyan all year, putting them a notch below Tufts and Amherst. Even after Wesleyan clinched the NESCAC West over Amherst, we predicted the Jeffs would get revenge in the NESCAC tournament by bouncing Wesleyan in the de facto semi-final game. That disrespect has been proven wrong time and time again. Their slow start clouded our minds from what is a very complete baseball team.

On Twitter Wesleyan players express this attitude in hashtags, retweets, and favorites. If you look at a Wesleyan player’s Twitter bio it will most likely include the phrase Tech baseball. Their favorite hashtag is the affectionate #dirtybirds. Wesleyan has followed the #dirtybirds mantra all season. They win games in any manner of ways by mashing, finessing, or clawing their way to victory. They bear a slight resemblance to the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. That team played an epic seven game World Series against the Yankees that ended with a walk-off homer by Bill Mazeroski. Every game Pittsburgh won was a close fought game while the Yankees won their three games in dominant fashion. Didn’t matter, Pirates won the series. When Tufts forced a final winner take all game by routing the Cardinals Sunday morning, nobody panicked. Wesleyan didn’t take the game as a sign that Tufts was a more talented or better team. They turned to Chris Law ’14 on the mound and jumped out to a 6-0 lead that ended holding up.

The disrespect still hasn’t stopped. Despite winning head to head match-ups against both Tufts and Amherst recently, the May 12 NEIBA (New England InterCollegiate Baseball Association) poll ranked Wesleyan eighth, Tufts third, and Amherst fourth in New England. Wesleyan is the seventh seed in their regional. Amherst and Tufts were both awarded three seeds in their respective regionals. People don’t know what to make of a team that doesn’t seem to be THAT good, but keeps coming out on top.

Wesleyan manager Mark Woodworth is happy to be back in the NCAA tournament. The last time Wesleyan made the tournament was in 1994 when Woodworth was a senior captain. That season saw the Cardinals make a magical run all the way to the National Title game before losing in the final. Wesleyan’s style of having no particular style will work well in the double-elimination format of the NCAA’s. Woodworth has crafted a team capable of making a run similar to that one by continuing to surprise teams that don’t understand what makes these Dirty Birds go.