Alex Rivera/Staff Writer
After Opening Weekend, the Panthers completed the sweep against the Fordham Rams at home, and look to keep that winning streak alive as they head to Daytona Beach to take on Bethune-Cookman on Tuesday.
On opening night, after a 45-minute rain delay, further delayed by a rogue fire alarm before the national anthem, the Panthers would score 20 runs, allowing seven runs. Starting pitcher Logan Allen would get the win after pitching for five innings. In the second inning he would give up a home run, but would remain unphased for the rest of the inning. Things only got scary when Fordham was able to load the bases, Coach Mervyl Melendez would say “…you want to minimize the damage, you know one run is okay if you can help it of course, like Logan did, strike out strike out…”
The second game would also be delayed because of rain, this time by two hours. While not as high scoring as the night before, the Panthers would be able to score eight runs while holding Fordham to nothing. Tyler Myrick would pitch for the Panthers, for the first time in over a year, pitching for 3.2 innings, allowing four hits and walking one batter and getting four strike outs. The game would be cut short from rain, being played only for seven innings.
Sunday’s midday game would be the finale for the Panthers, already having won the series, looked to sweep the series. The game would see seven runs scored in the bottom of the first, and the scoring would continue throughout the game. In all but the third inning, the Panthers brought in at least one run. As for starting pitcher Will Saxton, he would only allow two hits of his 61 pitches for five innings. The rest of the game would see a rotation of relief pitchers taking turns of pitching one inning each. The game would finish in two hours and forty minutes, with a Panthers win of 18-2.
As for the weekend of the as a whole, Coach Melendez described the weekend in one word: “Good”, but also went on to say that he was “Really proud of the effort from our team, the pitching was phenomenal, our hitting was spectacular…really what I’m proud of is the energy we had on the field…”
Players who had a great weekend: Jose Garcia, Jarett Ford, Derek Cartaya, Justin Farmer and Juan Teixeira. Each contributing a large part of the hitting, and bringing in runs. The leader in RBIs after this weekend is Alec Sanchez who was able to bring in seven runs and a homerun over the course of the weekend.
Sophomore Outfielder Jarrett Ford batted at over 0.500 this weekend with seven hits, four RBIs in 13 at bats. Ford said his production this weekend “As a player it feels good, you know when you put the work in and you see the results, it’s always a good feeling. I’m just happy I was able to produce.”
On Tuesday, the Panthers will play their first away game in Daytona against Bethune-Cookman who are also coming off their own weekend sweep against Alabama A&M, scoring a combined 34 points over the course of the weekend.
Afterwards, the Panthers will host the George Mason Patriots, who are coming off a weekend they would like to forget. They lost their season opener against North Carolina A&T 12-2 and lost to Butler 8-15 the next day. Their second game against Butler would be cancelled.
As for the Panthers, Coach Melendez said in their preparation for the coming week “We don’t need to change a whole lot, I think that we did a very good job both offensively and on the mound, we got to clean up a little bit of the defensive mistakes, miscues that we made, but other than that, we just need to build upon this weekend.”
In the same sentiment, Ford stated “We can always get better, always want to improve… this was a good start, now we’re just going to build off of that.” And added that he personally “…would like to work counts better, get on my pitch better earlier in the count and do more damage to baseballs and more extra base hits, more RBIs, things like that”
FIU will play away at Bethune-Cookman on Tuesday at 6pm before returning to FIU Baseball Stadium to play George Mason in a weekend series starting on Friday at 7pm.
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