The Lehigh baseball team take on Lafayette College in an important Patriot League four-game series Saturday and Sunday.
“There’s a unique opportunity in playing Lafayette,” coach Sean Leary said. “You have a rivalry series every year, and if for one moment there was a reason not to be motivated, or to forget the focus, (playing) Lafayette draws that right back in.”
He said while the Lafayette series is always an emotional one, the team is treating it like any other regular season Patriot League matchup. At the end of the day, each league game is worth the same, regardless of rivalry.
Lehigh (14-27, 3-9 Patriot) sits in last place in the Patriot League standings, two spots out of the playoffs. The Mountain Hawks are two spots down in the standings from Lafayette (12-22, 6-6 Patriot), which is in fourth place.
“We’re just not playing our best baseball right now,” sophomore pitcher Mark Washington said. “But we know we can be a lot better. We know if we throw strikes and hit the ball well in the same game, and be consistent with that, we have a great chance of winning the series and sweeping Lafayette.”
Lehigh must win seven out of its next eight games to earn a spot in the playoffs. To pull out a win or a series sweep this weekend, junior outfielder Stephen Fitzgerald said the team will have to build on the success it’s seen defensively while also being more consistent in all aspects of the game such as hitting, pitching and fielding success.
“We can’t just do two out of the three and take the other off,” he said. “It’s important to play a full game and have all the parts of your game working. I think we have the potential to do that, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that these next few weeks.”
Leary said a common struggle throughout the season has been executing with consistency, which has resulted in the team seeing glimpses of great baseball at times. To win out the season and make the playoffs, those glimpses of good baseball will need to transcend into a complete game, he said.
“Against the best teams we’ve played, we’ve been able to win when we played our game and we played it well,” Leary said. “So yes, there is that added element this weekend of our rival, but I don’t know that we’ll get too wrapped up in that emotion because we don’t need to add that into the mix for our weekend. We know what’s at stake.”
The team prepared this week by playing two games against University of Maryland Eastern Shore on Wednesday, which Leary said will give the offense an opportunity to get game repetitions that will hopefully translate to hits in clutch situations before a critical league game. Meanwhile the pitchers will be getting mentally prepared throughout the week by getting practice reps in and looking over the scout.
Lehigh lost both games to Maryland, falling 7-6 in Game 1 and 5-4 on a walk-off in Game 2.
“Guys have to come through with one clutch hit over the course of the weekend,” Leary said. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if six guys do that a little better, then there’s a run or two more every game.”
The first game begins at Legacy Park at noon Saturday, followed by the second game of the series at 2:30 p.m. The schedule is identical for Sunday.
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