W&J baseball ready for restart in PAC tournament
Photo courtesy W&J College
Adam Morris started as a football player at Clarion but is now one of W&J’s most productive baseball players.
Photo courtesy W&J College
Pitcher Tyler Horvat will start Thursday’s game for W&J in the PAC tournament.
Two years ago, the Washington & Jefferson College baseball team came within a whisker of winning the NCAA Division III championship.
Two relatively close losses ended the chance but there would always be next year.
Right?
Well, no. Just nine games into last season, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and closed everything down. No rest of the regular season, no Presidents’ Athletic Conference tournament and no NCAA playoffs.
“It was really tough,” said W&J head coach Jeff Mountain. “Last year, was a bit of a rebuilding year. We were young last year. We are still young this year. We have a lot of sophomores and juniors. Those guys not getting that experience was difficult. It was hard because we didn’t know how we stacked up against teams. We went to Florida and had a tough time of it (before the season ended).
“This team is pretty hungry. They don’t panic and work hard. So we’re pretty confident where we are.”
Mountain will have a better idea whether their No. 4 ranking in the country and 33-1 record are deserved when the PAC tournament gets underway this week.
W&J’s first game is Thursday against Saint Vincent. The double-elimination tournament will be held at Ross Memorial Park in North Franklin Township.
The Presidents are making their 12th straight conference tournament appearance. W&J won its 12th PAC title in 2019.
The winner of this year’s tournament will earn the league’s automatic qualifying bid to the NCAA Division III Championships, with regional play scheduled for May 27-31. Team selections for the Division III Championship will be made May 23.
This W&J team seems to have it all.
You want hitting? Well, the Presidents have nine players with 30 or more at-bats who are hitting between .347 (Evan Sante) and .431 (Logan Scheider). The team batting average is .120 points higher than their opponents (.346-.226). W&J also has large leads over the opponents in doubles (79-35), triples (19-3) and home runs (27-10).
Interestingly, Peter Kalinski leads the teams in stolen bases with nine and he’s a catcher. But the most intriguing story centers around outfielder Adam Morris.
“He went to Clarion to play football but it didn’t work out there,” said Mountain. “Then he transferred to W&J to play football. But he hurt his shoulder and going into his junior year expressed an interest in coming out for the team. We don’t get a lot of players that way. We usually get players who are going into their junior or senior year of high school.
“We have to thank (W&J football coach) Mike Sirianni for that one.”
Now a senior, Morris is batting .429 in 112 at-bats and leads the team with 48 hits, 10 doubles, 5 triples and six home runs.
How about pitching?
Ten pitchers on the staff have ERAs under 3.00 and four below 2.00, including starters Tyler Horvat and Henry Litman, who will pitch the first two games in that order.
Litman and Horvat are each 8-0 with ERAs of 1.40 and 1.59. Horvat has 62 strikeouts in 56.2 innings and Litman 57 in 57.2 innings.
Michael Zito, the closer, has six saves.
This is a good defensive team with just 37 errors in 352 chances for a .970 fielding percentage.
So what team concerns Mountain in this tournament?
“Anything can happen, obviously. Bethany always plays us tough and Franciscan can really hit the ball,” Mountain said. “But Grove City is impressive. This is the best team they’ve had. This is the best pitching they’ve had, the best talent they’ve had since I’ve been here.”