By Justin Zackal
Bryce Schnatterly and the W&J Presidents hope to repeat as champions of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.
Washington & Jefferson and Thomas More have alternated winning PAC baseball championships each year since 2013 and, even though it’s the Saints’ turn to win this year, a lot of evidence seems to point to W&J repeating as champion.
The host and No. 1-seed of the double elimination tournament, W&J (25-14-1, 16-2 PAC) has fewer PAC losses than it did going into last year’s tournament, which by winning propelled the Presidents to the NCAA Division III championship game. The Presidents also swept a three-game series at home with Thomas More, March 30-31 (7-0, 10-3, 6-5), the first of which counted as a non-conference game.
But according to W&J head coach Jeff Mountain, the Presidents winning their 12th title won’t be easy at the four-team PAC Championship Tournament, May 10-12, at Ross Memorial Park. W&J is different compared to last year, and even this year’s regular season victories are not predictive of tournament success.
Here are some of the reasons:
- W&J lost a lot of players from last year’s team that went 42-13 and 21-3 in the PAC, including all five first-team all-PAC players, namely PAC Player (Derek Helbing) and Pitcher (Riley Groves) of the Year.
- This year, the Presidents caught Thomas More during a tough stretch of the Saints’ schedule: a season-low five games under .500, before they finished the regular season as the No. 2 seed with records of 19-17 overall and 13-4 in the PAC.
- One of the Presidents’ strengths is pitching depth (they have four of the PAC’s top nine ERA leaders), something that played in their favor with a change in the schedule formatting this year (nine-inning doubleheaders instead of three-game series, which explains fewer conference games to lose) and poor weather that resulted in unfavorable conditions for hitters and games condensed with not much rest for top-heavy pitching staffs.
“The nine-inning games, the weather jamming things up, that’s helped us,” Mountain said. “But everything will be on more of an even playing field when the tournament starts. We’ve got a lot of guys who are going to be new to the postseason setting, so hopefully they’ll take the mindset that it is game 41, 42 and however long we are there and go after it.”
W&J senior pitcher Bryce Schnatterly leads the PAC with a 2.08 ERA. W&J’s team ERA of 3.22 is more than a run better than the second-best PAC team, Thomas More at 4.42.
“We’ve been consistent from a pitching standpoint and offensively we struggled earlier, but a lot of that was figuring out who our guys are and the top spots,” Mountain said. “We’ve been strong up the middle defensively; I think that’s key.”
Four PAC teams have better batting averages than W&J’s .290 clip, including Thomas More’s league-best .327 mark, backed by junior Sam Hauer’s .401 average that’s third in the conference.
Thomas More’s Sean Lawrence is one of the top hitters in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.
“Thomas More is full of them,” said Mountain, when asked which hitters will be “tough outs” for opposing pitchers, before naming Hauer, senior Ben Laumann (.353) and junior Sean Lawrence (.378). “It took them awhile to find themselves but they did and with it being their last conference tournament (Thomas More is leaving the PAC after this year), they’re going to be fired up. They are very talented and a very well-coached team.”
Third-seeded Thiel (15-21, 11-7 PAC), the only team in the field with a win over W&J (4-3 at Thiel on April 8), and fourth-seeded Saint Vincent (14-19, 10-7 PAC) make up the remainder tournament qualifiers.
Mountain noted how confident Saint Vincent is behind starting pitcher Jimmy Malone, who posted a 3.99 ERA with a 4-2 record as one of three PAC players to log more than 70 innings this year.
Junior Alex Lam (.379) and senior Zach Hudecek (.347) lead Thiel’s offense; they combined for five of the team’s 10 hits in the win over W&J.
“Anything can truly happen in a tournament,” Mountain said. “It’s going to be how we respond to adversity; that’s how we advanced as far as we did last year. Anyone can win the tournament and anyone can go two and out.”
