After eight games in 11 days — a busy opening schedule to say the least — the Penn baseball team is ready to restore order to its season this weekend.
The Quakers will host Mount St. Mary’s in their first weekend series of the year. With doubleheaders both tomorrow and Sunday at Meiklejohn Stadium, however, there will be little time for the Red and Blue to catch their breath.
The frantic beginning to the season has been especially tough on the team’s pitching staff, which has compiled an 8.11 earned run average.
The revolving door on the mound for Penn (3-5) has featured 14 different pitchers, and the team used nine during its win over Temple on Wednesday.
Yesterday, however, coach John Cole revealed that righthanders Vince Voiro and Paul Cusick, a sophomore and a junior respectively, and sophomore lefthander Chris McNulty will each start a game this weekend and look to pitch deep into the game.
The three hurlers will be in for a challenge against Mt. St. Mary’s middle-of-the-order duo of juniors Shane Eyler and Kyle Kane, who combined to hit 22 home runs last season.
Cole also said that he will continue to keep the bulk of his pitchers on the schedule he’s been employing all spring, intending to use them in one or two innings during midweek games rather than having them throw short sessions in the bullpen.
“We chose to throw our guys and keep them game-ready,” said Cole, who stated that the fourth spot in the pitching rotation remains up for grabs. “You’ll see a lot of that from me this year just because we’re not super deep on the mound.”
The Mountaineers’ pitching staff has employed the opposite strategy, but the team’s 6.72 ERA suggests similar results. Five hurlers from Mount St. Mary’s (4-6) have logged over ten innings already, whereas only two from Penn have done the same.
On the mound this weekend, the Mountaineers could feature sophomores Brady Feigl and Buddy Fields, two major league prospects who throw in the low-90s according to Cole, as well as senior Mike Matta, who has allowed just three runs in 12 innings this season.
“They’ll come in and challenge you so it’ll be a good test for us,” Penn outfielder Tom Grandieri said.
“We’ll see some good arms,” Cole added. “That’s what we want, though.”
Indeed, the Quakers’ offense has its hands full with the Mountaineers staff, despite pounding out 12 runs and 10 extra-base hits against Temple Wednesday.
But while sophomore infielder Dan Williams and freshman first baseman Spencer Branigan have been especially hot, Grandieri, an All-Big 5 performer last season who is currently hitting .342, is still searching for consistency at the plate.
“You might get only four at-bats in a game so you have to make the most of them,” the senior said. “[But] it is nice when a few guys are hot. Hitting’s pretty much contagious.”
At-bats won’t be hard to come by this weekend, as the Quakers, who have gone 5-4 against Mount St. Mary’s over the last three seasons, play their first back-to-back doubleheaders of the year.
“If you get game one, it makes it a whole lot easier,” Grandieri said. “[In] games three and four, it’s a war of attrition out there because a lot of arms are tired.”
“It’s just a long weekend,” he added. “It is a grind.”
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