By Tucker Paquette
@tpaquette17
Saturday afternoon marked the nicest weather Springfield College has seen in a long while, with an abundance of sunshine beaming down on Archie Allen Field. However, the actual happenings on the field weren’t as bright.
Springfield baseball dropped its opening game of the season against Amherst 5-0, on a day where the Pride struggled to generate a rhythm offensively. The team recorded just three hits over the course of the afternoon, while walking three times, as well.
In the eyes of Pride head coach Chad Shade, who coached his first game for his alma mater on Saturday, situational hitting in particular is an area he believes his group can improve upon.
“It was executing at the right times, timely hits,” Shade said. “I believe four of their five runs came with two-out hits. Two out hits won ball games. And we didn’t come through in those situations.”
On the flip side, though, Shade was pleased with the quality of certain at-bats the Pride turned in, as well as the loud contact Springfield hitters were making, even on outs. The next step, according to Shade, is turning those strong at-bats into runners on base, and the runners on base into runs.
“I think we had some good at-bats,” Shade said. “We had a lot of positive. We had some balls that were hit hard. But when we have runners in scoring position, we’ve got to do a better job of executing. We need to do a better job of driving those runs in. And overall as an offense, just building off of those innings when we do get some traffic and guys do a good job getting on base.”
A main factor in the quiet afternoon for Springfield’s offense was the performance of Amherst pitcher Saahi Jetti. Jetti, a first-year, entered the game in the fourth inning and pitched all the way through until the end, recording six innings of shutout ball buoyed by 10 strikeouts.
Shade was impressed by Jetti’s outing, while acknowledging his group’s need to adjust against quality pitching.
“He’s a talented first-year for those guys over there,” Shade said. “I think he’s going to have a great career over there. And obviously, he had an excellent outing. He was locating a slider, it was a good pitch. We just didn’t make adjustments quick enough with him.”
Meanwhile, Amherst’s bats did the majority of their damage in isolated spots. Jack Darcy smoked a two-out, two-run triple to deep center field in the second inning, and Carson Ames smacked a single to center in the eighth that brought two runs home and bumped his team’s lead to five runs.
For the Pride, they received two steady outings from Nate Kelleher-Mochak and Josh Mayo. Kelleher-Mochak, the team’s opening day starter and a captain, pitched four innings while allowing two runs. Mayo went 3.2 innings and surrendered three runs. Shade liked what he saw from two of his veteran pitchers, and noted how Saturday’s game boiled down to a few specific plays.
“They’re both competitors,” Shade said of Kelleher-Mochak and Mayo. “If we had a double header, they would have been split. Those are guys that we trust. I think they did a great job out there competing today. I think we have a couple of plays here and there from changing the course of that game.”
The Pride will be back in action at home on Wednesday, March 4 against Western New England, with first pitch set for 2:45. That contest will be the first chance for Springfield to make some tweaks as it settles into a brand new season.
“We’ve got a lot of baseball left to play this season,” Shade said. “I think our guys are up to the challenge and are going to make those adjustments.”
(Photo courtesy of Springfield College Athletics)