By Tucker Paquette
@tpaquette17
Springfield College baseball picked up its first win of the season and the first victory of first-year head coach Chad Shade’s tenure on Wednesday afternoon, beating Western New England by a final score of 8-7 in an offense-heavy matchup.
For Shade, notching this win takes a weight off his shoulders, though he was more concerned with the strong execution his group displayed down the stretch on Wednesday.
“Relief, I think that was it,” Shade said of his emotions after the Pride recorded the final out. “This is something that was really good to see with these guys. We talked about it after the first game of coming out, winning the seventh, eighth and ninth [innings] and just always believing that we’re going to come out with a ‘W’.”
Those seventh, eighth and ninth innings were indeed pivotal, as the Pride held the Golden Bears to just one run over those final three frames en route to the victory. That was a nice change of pace from the first six innings, where the teams combined for 14 runs in a game that saw 20 total hits between the two teams.
After being blanked in their season opener on Saturday, this offensive outpouring was a welcome sight for Shade and company, although they expected a game like this to come sooner rather than later.
“We told those guys, ‘hey, this lineup’s gonna hit, you guys are gonna do a good job, you just gotta stay with it,’” Shade said. “And they trusted their process today, they did a much better job commanding the zone overall. We took our walks when they gave them to us, we had some big hits, we had some good two out hits.”
Four of the Pride’s runs came in the second inning, as a series of baserunners to keep an extremely productive inning moving along. Meanwhile, a three-run home run off the bat of Nate Garafalo in the fifth stood out as the highlight of the day.
It is the second-inning display of small ball and quality at-bats that stands out to Shade, though, especially after Springfield’s offensive struggles just a few days ago. Beyond that, he was thrilled with the fact that his team continued to stack quality at-bats and produce runs over the course of the afternoon.
“It was great to see that response from this offense, it’s a veteran group,” Shade said. “And I think they did exactly that, they came out ready to go and they were excited for another opportunity today. It’s just never being satisfied, never getting comfortable. Whenever you have a lead, you gotta keep building on top of it.”
One thing Shade and the team would like to see improve is their defense. The Pride made three errors on Wednesday, and could easily have had a couple more. Shade recognizes this, while giving props to a pitching staff that was heavily deployed and managed to help steer the team out of trouble.
“I think defensively, we made some mistakes that ended up hurting us,” Shade said. “And some of the mistakes that don’t go in the books as an error. Not turning some double plays here and there, just a couple of mental mistakes that put our pitchers in bad situations. Those guys kept fighting and did a great job getting us out of some jams.”
The Pride will be back in action this weekend for a busy slate at Archie Allen Field. The festivities kick off on Saturday at 12:30 p.m., when Springfield plays host to Worcester State.
(Photo courtesy of Springfield College Athletics)