What began as a promising weekend road-trip for the Fairfield baseball team ended with disappointment following consecutive losses to Rider.
Fairfield defeated Rider, 7-6, on Sunday afternoon at Sonny Pittaro Field. But the Broncs stormed back and won the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader and Monday afternoon’s rubber match. The Stags were outscored by a combined 18 runs in the two losses, and dropped to 8-10 in MAAC play.
“It was disappointing,” said Fairfield Head Coach John Slosar. “We played well in the first game and did all the clutch things we needed to do to win a ball game.”
Fairfield was out-hit by Rider, 11-10, but its hits were all important ones. Most of the Stags’ clutch play came from infielder Brian Schappert ’07 Schappert went 3-for-4 with a walk in game one with two runs scored, two runs batted in, and a home run.
But the Stags could not carry over their clutch play during the second two games of the weekend. Pitching and timely hitting and pitching were both missing for the Stags, according to Slosar.
“We gave up all a ton of runs during the last two games of the series and we could not climb back,” said Slosar. “We also left a lot of runners on base.”
The Stags dropped the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader, 7-0, and left 16 runners on base en route to a 17-6 loss.
Catcher Tom Arpino ’06 and infielder Mark Geanuleas ’05 were bright spots in Monday’s loss. Arpino hit his second home run of the season and Geanuleas went 3-for-4 with a run scored.
Fairfield will look for more bright spots when it plays host to Iona for a weekend series. Saturday’s doubleheader begins at noon at Alumni Diamond.
Leave a Reply