Baseball: Overworked pen struggles

By: Joel Delgado / Asst Sports Director
#TROY 14, FIU 12#

The Golden Panthers held the lead for the first eight innings of their series finale against the visiting Troy Trojans.
But the team ended up falling behind after the one inning that mattered most.
FIU (13-7, 2-1 SBC) gave up nine runs in the final two innings, unable to pick up a series sweep and allowing Troy (8-10, 2-4 SBC) to salvage the final game of the series on March 21.
While FIU still managed to take two of three in the series, head coach Turtle Thomas was disappointed with the final result.
“Troy is a good team and we flat out just gave them the game,” Thomas said after the game. “We just didn’t make the right pitches.”
Aaron Arboleya cruised through his first four innings on the mound as the Golden Panther offense helped give the FIU starter a comfortable 6-0 lead going into the fifth inning.
That was when the right-hander ran into trouble, giving up a home run over the left field wall to Blake Martz. The Trojans would make it a 6-5 game after chasing Arboleya out of the game in the sixth inning.
The Panthers struck right back with an offensive outburst in the bottom half of the inning sparked by a double by Jeremy Patton and a single by Mike Martinez to start the inning.
Martinez shined for FIU on offense, finishing 5-for-5 at the plate and scoring three times in the process.
Despite rebuilding their lead, the Trojans proved to remain resilient as Chad Watson crushed a three-run home run to right field in the eighth to pull Troy within two runs.
Thomas then opted to go with Eric Berkowitz to get the final three outs to close the game. Berkowitz, making his third appearance in as many days, failed to record an out and gave up the lead after a three-run blast by Shohei Fujita to complete the Trojan rally.
Fujita’s home run proved to be the deciding blow as the Golden Panthers failed to answer in the ninth after Pablo Bermudez struck out with two runners on base.

#BULLPEN ADJUSTMENTS#

Turtle Thomas had his bullpen arrangement just about figured out until last week, when the team learned that emerging closer Bryam Garcia will be out indefinitely due to an unspecified injury to his throwing arm.
The injury forces Thomas to resort to a revolving door to fill in the closer role and said that Jorge Marban and Alberto Cardenas would fill the gap left by Garcia.
But it was Eric Berkowitz who appeared to have Thomas’ trust throughout the weekend. The right-handed senior pitched three consecutive games over the weekend against Troy, picking up two saves before blowing the save on March 21.

#OFFENSIVE POWER#

The Golden Panthers may have dropped the final game of their series against Troy but they stand as the Sun Belt Conference’s leading offensive unit as of March 22, batting .342 as a team.
Mike Martinez (.431), Garrett Wittels (.431) and Pablo Bermudez (.407) rank among the top 10 hitters in the conference.
Martinez is tied for most doubles (11) in the conference this season while Jabari Henry, who now has a team-high 30 RBI on the season, ranks third in that category and is first in slugging percentage (.769).
Pitching has been a different story, however, as the team has struggled to keep opposing offenses at bay and now ranks eighth in the conference with a team ERA of 5.73.