Baseball: Pitt aims to snap cold streak, hosts Penguins

There is something about Youngstown State’s baseball team.

The Penguins, for whatever reason, have coaxed the best and the worst out of Pitt this season. On March 18, with the Panthers coming off a 3-game sweep at Virginia Tech, Youngstown State visited Charles L. Cost Field.

Pitt cruised to a 12-1 victory over the Penguins and proceeded to win its next four contests and seven of the following nine games, both of which still mark season-best stretches.

Of course, right after Pitt’s loss at home against West Virginia, the Panthers lost 7-6 on April 2 at Youngstown State. Then they dropped six of their next seven games. 

Now the ice-cold Panthers return home to Charles L. Cost Field this afternoon at 3 p.m., having lost eight of their last nine games — including the consecutive defeats against West Virginia and Youngstown State — looking to once again right the ship against the Penguins.

Pitt (16-19, 8-10 Atlantic Coast Conference) has already eclipsed its loss total from all of last year, when it posted an impressive 42-17 record, and the team’s next loss would mark the program’s third 20-loss season in the past five years. While that statistic seems inevitable, the Panthers would love to delay it as long as possible, and at least past Tuesday afternoon.

While no announcement has been made, expect freshman T.J. Zeuch to take his turn on the mound against the lowly Penguins (6-23, 1-7 Horizon League), whose dismal season includes a 2-17 record on the road.

The Penguins have hit a total of five home runs, with senior infielder Phil Lipari leading the way with three. Freshman utility player Alex Larivee leads the Penguins in batting with a .333 average, a mark that would be tops among Pitt’s batters as well.

But recently, the Panthers have shown that that doesn’t mean much.

They suffered a second consecutive sweep on the road against an ACC opponent, this time at the hands of the University of Miami Hurricanes. The series in South Beach, which was seen as a chance for the Panthers to gain some much needed ground in the conference’s Coastal Division standings, did not go Pitt’s way. The Hurricanes’ pitching staff stymied Pitt’s offense, which scored a total of four runs in the three game series at Alex Rodriguez Park. 

But the Panthers’ bats have been dormant long before their trip to the Sunshine State, as the team has failed to score more than six runs in a game since March 22 against Duke.

The batters will get their chance against a weak Penguins’ pitching staff, which doesn’t have a pitcher with both three or more starts and ERA under 7.54.

It might be easy to overlook a non-conference, unrenowned team like Youngstown State, but the Panthers must be careful to avoid doing just that.

Pitt is currently 1-1 on the season against their Ohio counterparts, with the most recent contest resulting in defeat to Youngstown State that featured a lackluster collapse from the Panthers. Pitt held a 6-3 lead in the third inning, but were held hitless from the fourth inning on. Those doldrums set the precedent for Pitt’s next game, in which it went no-hit over the full nine innings by Virginia left-hander Nathan Kirby.

After the Tuesday afternoon home contest, the Panthers will travel to Kent, Ohio, to take on the Kent State Golden Flashes Wednesday at 3 p.m. The game will be the final tuneup for another conference, three-game series this weekend against the Clemson Tigers at Charles L. Cost Field, where the Panthers will look to improve on their 8-10 in conference record.

Pitt’s recent history against Youngstown State shows that Tuesday’s game could dictate just how hot or cold the Panthers are heading into the weekend.