When the Bowling Green baseball team hosts Findlay this afternoon, their first goal will be just that; hosting Findlay.
The Falcons have jumped out to an 8-2 record thus far this season thanks to a 6-1 showing on their spring break trip to Bradenton, Fla. They had similar success last season, starting the season 7-2 after a strong road trip down south but were stopped by the weather in the next few weeks.
“We need to play,” BG head coach Danny Schmitz said. “The problem we ran into last year was we had a great spring and then we turned around and played just one game in the next two weeks.”
The forecast for today is a high of 40 and mostly sunny according to weather.com, and the Falcons are hoping that holds true. Until yesterday, the Falcons hadn’t practiced at Steller Field once, a trend they are hoping Mother Nature ends soon.
It didn’t look that way last week while the team was in Florida and it snowed just about every day. That had Schmitz worried that not only would today’s game be delayed (it was) but it would also be cancelled.
“To be honest,” Schmitz said. “I thought I’d talk to our field manager, Jeff Osbourne, and he’d say we wouldn’t be able to play at all.”
Right now, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
If the Falcons do get on the field, they will get a chance to continue their hot-hitting. Even without being able to practice outside much, BG has brought the lumber to every game after the season opener, in which they were shut out by Murray State.
“Anytime you’re not able to get outside you’re not sure how you’ll get out of the gates,” Schmitz said. “But after the first game at Murray State, we started swinging the bats well.”
That has translated into some pretty impressive batting averages in the team’s first 10 games. Andy Hudak has led the way for the Falcons with a .439 average while knocking in 14 runs. Josh Dietz, Tyler Wasserman and Nolan Reimold are each hitting over .350 to start the year. Reimold has packed the biggest punch of all the batters, bringing a .718 slugging percentage and seven extra base hits into today’s game.
Findlay will bring a 3-7 record into the game and is coming off a spring trip of their own. The Falcons know that if they plan to win this game, and most of the rest of their games this season ,they will have to have some solid innings from their pitchers on top of the great hitting.
“I think this team has a great chance to swing the bats well,” Schmitz said. “But this team is only going to go as far as their pitching takes them.”
The Falcons will open their home season with Findlay at 2 p.m. today at Steller Field.
