Dropping nine of its first 11 games is certainly not the way the baseball team envisioned starting its season, not to mention how it wanted to spend spring break. Playing 11 games in 10 days against teams that were already in midseason, Tufts went just 2-9 on a road trip through North Carolina and Virginia, including four one-run losses.
"It's disappointing because I don't feel we got better as a team," junior co-captain catcher Alex Perry said. "Our main goal is to get better every day and every game and get back up [to Tufts] playing our best ball. I can't say this team has gotten better every day. Hopefully, we'll turn it around up north, but we didn't make the steps we need to make down here."
"We came down here with the goal of winning every game, and we didn't play well at all," sophomore pitcher Pat O'Donnell added. "It's a reality check that we really have to turn it around come this weekend when the games count for real."
The Jumbos' latest defeat came at the hand of Virginia Wesleyan, which beat Tufts 14-5 yesterday afternoon. The Marlins started off the rout by plating three runs on two hits in the bottom of the first, but the Jumbos came right back in the top of the second, scoring four of their own on the strength of five hits and two walks. Tufts managed to stay on top through the fourth, with both teams scoring a run in the inning, but Virginia Wesleyan effectively ended the game in the bottom of the sixth. The Marlins used five hits, including two doubles, as well as a walk, a hit batsman and a Tufts error to score six runs. The Jumbos put up goose eggs in each following frame, while Virginia Wesleyan padded its lead with an additional four runs over the next three innings, giving the Marlins a nine-run cushion by the end of the game.
"You cannot let up a big inning," Perry said. "If you look at a lot of our losses, we let up that big inning ... If you look past those big innings, we could've won every game. [Yesterday], we let up that big inning, and it hurt us."
Before the loss to the Marlins, Tufts had dropped its previous three games, including getting swept in a doubleheader by Apprentice for the first time since the teams started playing each other in 1995. The Jumbos had a strong history against the Builders heading into the doubleheader, having won 13 of their previous 14 games against them, but Tufts could not stop Apprentice from extending its winning streak to five games, as the Jumbos lost by a score of 7-3 in the first contest and 6-5 in the second.
The Builders got off to a quick start in the first game, jumping out to a 3-0 lead by the third inning. Tufts made it close in the fourth when senior co-captain third baseman Kevin Casey and sophomore outfielder Ian Goldberg both scored after leading the inning off with a walk and single, respectively. But Apprentice answered right back in the bottom of the frame, as the first three batters of the inning reached base and all scored -- one by a sacrifice fly and the others on a two-RBI single. Tufts would add another run in the sixth, but it was not enough to overcome the lead already constructed by the Builders.
The second game was a closer affair, as the Jumbos scored three in the first to put the pressure on early and still held a 5-3 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth. That was when Apprentice did its damage, however, as again the first three batters reached base and all scored, this time without another hit; one scored on a wild pitch, another on a groundout, and the last on a fielder's choice. Down a run in the top of the seventh, junior first baseman Corey Pontes singled and reached third on a balk and a wild pitch, but the Jumbos could not manage to get him home, thus ending the game.
"There were plays offensively and defensively where we didn't get it done as a team," Perry said. "We had pressure at the end to get it done when the odds were against us. It wasn't that one play; it was that whole game. There are many plays that led to that last-inning situation."
The Jumbos had started off the trip 1-1 but went on to lose eight of their next nine, with their only victory coming in a 2-1 triumph over North Carolina Wesleyan. Both the hitting and pitching struggled, as the team compiled a .267 batting average and a 7.61 ERA.
"Every loss is a collective team effort," Perry said. "You need all 26 guys to contribute in some way. We just didn't have that. It was no specific guys -- it was a collective team effort. You can't really pinpoint one sort of thing [that went wrong] because every game, you need all the guys to be on the same page as a cohesive unit."
"As far as pitching, we just didn't get the job done," said O'Donnell, who led the team with a 3.02 ERA last season but put together a 5.40 mark over the trip. "We just didn't throw enough strikes and couldn't get the big outs when we needed to."
Tufts will next play a three-game series against Bates at home this weekend in its first conference competition of the year. Last year, the Jumbos, who went 6-6 in the NESCAC East, took two out of three from the Bobcats.
"Honestly, I think there are a lot of question marks," Perry said. "We have a lot to prove when we come back home. We want to see the toughness that we have as a team enough to not dwell on the past and look toward the future and our goals of having a winning season and winning the NESCAC. We're going to be hungry ... Hopefully, we can get little tougher -- we made a lot of mistakes -- and get back to what Tufts baseball is all about."
