Three innings into Friday's contest against the Trinity Bantams, the baseball team looked primed to build on its eight-game winning streak. The Jumbos had jumped out to a 3-0 lead, and senior Dave Ryan was looking good on the hill, stranding five base runners over his first three innings of work.
But with two outs in the top half of the fourth inning, things fell apart for the Jumbos. By the time the inning was over, the Bantams had plated eight runs, and from there, the game - and the series - slipped away. The Bantams snapped the Jumbos' winning streak with an 18-5 victory Friday and proceeded to take two more on Saturday, leaving Medford with a three-game sweep and some sweet revenge one year after Tufts swept Trinity in Hartford, Conn.
After two singles, an error, a home run and a walk for the Bantams in the fourth inning of the series opener, coach John Casey replaced Ryan with senior Jake Crawford. Crawford coughed up three consecutive hits before exiting for sophomore Josh Manning, who walked his first two batters and threw a pickoff attempt into the outfield before finally ending the inning with a strikeout. Manning went on to pitch the next four innings, despite struggling throughout and surrendering 10 earned runs.
The Jumbos picked up a pair of runs in the bottom of the ninth, but the deficit was insurmountable as Tufts dropped its first conference home game of the year while giving up 18 runs, 19 hits, three home runs and 10 walks. Every Bantams starter reached base at least once in the game, and the 18-5 final could have been even more lopsided had Trinity not left 15 runners on base.
"We cannot change the past or predict the future," sophomore infielder Tim Mitropoulos said after the blowout loss. "We have to be in the moment and go from there. We want to live pitch to pitch and inning by inning."
Saturday, though, brought much of the same. Strong gusts made for a chilly afternoon and, unfortunately for the Jumbos, their bats were equally cold in the first game. The tandem of Sean Meekins and Ben Goldberg held Tufts to just one hit - an RBI double in the first by junior Eric Weikert, who leads the team with 26 RBIs - in the seven-inning contest.
Sophomore Christian Sbily got the start for the Jumbos. Entering the game, he was unfazed by the Bantams' 18-run explosion the previous day.
"Regardless of what happened the day before, I know that I have to focus on the things that I can control and do everything I can to prepare myself in a way that will help me perform to the best of my ability," he said.
But defensive inconsistencies made things more difficult than they should have been for Sbily. Tufts made three errors in the game, including two outfield blunders in the first inning alone - a misjudged line drive and a ball that popped out of the glove - helping Trinity score five runs in the opening frame. After walking five batters and surrendering seven runs (four earned), Sbily was replaced by classmate Dean Lambert, who finished the game with two scoreless innings as the Bantams walked away with a 7-1 win and locked up the series.
The series finale was the most competitive of the three games. Weikert stayed hot in the first, driving home freshman center fielder Connor McDavitt with an RBI single. In the second, Weikert and senior co-captain Matt Collins - who played the field this past weekend for the first time since recovering from Tommy John surgery - each scored and had an RBI single, contributing to a five-run inning that gave Tufts a 6-0 lead.
The Bantams retaliated with two runs in both the third and fourth innings, while Trinity reliever Ryan Carr held the hosts scoreless in the third, fourth and fifth. But in the sixth, Weikert came through once again, blasting his team-leading fourth home run to increase Tufts' lead to 7-5.
With a two-run cushion, Casey turned the ball over to senior Kevin Gilchrist after freshmen Kyle Slinger and Willie Archibald had combined for six innings, allowing five total earned runs and notching six strikeouts. In his first inning of work, though, Gilchrist gave up a game-tying two-run homer to shortstop Stephen Rogers. Then, a manufactured run in the eighth put the Bantams ahead 8-7.
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, sophomore Max Freccia singled through the right side, spurring a hopeful comeback for the Jumbos. Then, with two outs, Rogers made an error, placing the tying run on second and the winning run on first. But sophomore Sean Harrington went down swinging, ending the game and the bitterly disappointing weekend for Tufts, which will try to move past the losses and look ahead to next week's NESCAC matchup with the Colby Mules.
"It is just understood that we have to learn from the mistakes we made in those games and work hard this week to prepare for Colby," Sbily said.
The Jumbos are now 12-6 overall and 3-3 in conference play. They are off the next four days and will use the time to prepare for the three-game set with the Mules, which begins on Friday at 3 p.m. at Huskins Field.
