The Falcons’ pitching so far this season has been stellar and once again dominated most of this past weekend.
Liz Vrabel combined to give up only one run on five hits while striking out 16 in two complete games as the Falcons swept Eastern Michigan 4-1, 8-0 on Saturday.
Unfortunately for the Falcons, the lack of hitting by the opposition didn’t count towards hits on their end of the box score on Sunday as they could only muster three hits in a 2-0 loss to the Eagles. It was the 12th time the Falcons have been shutout this season despite a strong outing from pitcher Emily Gouge.
They’ll look to turn around their fortune today when they head up to Western Michigan for an afternoon double-header starting at 2 p.m.
“It’s always tough to play up there,” head coach Leigh Ross-Shaw said. “These two wins could really give us some space and have us sitting pretty well in the West Division, but we’ve never seen this pitcher they have now so hopefully our pitching can keep us in the game until our hitting comes around.”
BG is 22-22 overall heading in with an 8-6 Mid-American Conference record that is good enough for second place in the West Division. The Broncos come in 12-20 with a MAC record of 7-6 as the two teams are five games in back of Central Michigan for the top spot.
A top spot that is earned through consistency on the field and right now Ross-Shaw’s Falcons have struggled to produce hits when they need them the most.
“We just didn’t get the job done,” Ross-Shaw said of the disappointing hitting performance on Sunday. “We didn’t hit — that’s the bottom line and right now there is just no magical answer to our problems.”
In Sunday’s loss BG stranded 10 runners as they were 0-for-8 with runners on base and 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Two of their three hits came on infield singles as they appeared flat throughout the game.
Yet in the end, they still had a shot with two outs and two runners on base, but hit into a game-ending fielder’s choice that stranded those two runners just like they did in the fourth inning. Three were stranded in the first inning as Eastern’s Nikki Denman struck out two Falcon batters with the bases loaded.
“Right now I’ve gotten to the point where we’ll see whose going to show up — we’ll see if they’re going to come through,” Ross-Shaw said. “We got to find a lineup that’s going to score some runs and there’s nothing new that you can pull out in April — we’ve done everything and they need to continue trying to piece together good hitting games.”
Saturday, the Falcons did piece together those strong hitting games as they scored 12 runs and had 15 total hits. Leading hitter Gina Rango earned MAC Player of the Week honors for her performance on the week; she went 2-3 in the two games and had 3 RBIs.
The Falcons also had Vrabel earn MAC Pitcher-of-the-Week honors as she pieced together some strong performances as well. On the week she was 4-0 surrendering only one run and had an ERA of 0.31.
“She (Vrabel) is continually going out there and having a good showing every time,” Ross-Shaw said. “Physically she’s such a strong pitcher, but mentally this year she has been tougher and very focused.”
Vrabel is now 13-9 on the year with an ERA of 2.02 and has 160 strikeouts to show for that new focus. She now owns three of the top-four single-season strikeout totals in school history.
She and Gouge pitched solid throughout the weekend again as the two dominated most of the play. Gouge suffered the loss on Sunday, but only gave up two runs on two hits in five innings for the effort. Vrabel finished the game with two hitless innings.
The BG pitchers will now face a Western team that has also struggled at the plate this season much like the Falcons. As a team, the Broncos have a .186 batting average in 13 MAC games and have only scored 25 runs.
They are lead in hitting by Katie Niemi who has a batting average of .263 with an RBI and five runs in MAC play. Danielle Daughtry has a team leading six RBIs in conference play.
On the mound, Kyla Sullivan and Krysten Schumaker are most likely to see action for the Broncos after losing starting pitcher Tricia Vanderslik to injury.
After today’s doubleheader BG will head to Marshall for a single non-conference game before heading to Athens on Saturday.
