By Nolan Locke
Despite perfect baseball weather on March 19, the Purchase Panthers men’s baseball team fell short against the New Paltz Hawks.
The Panther's 15-8 loss felt like a tale of two cities, as the offense was able to put runs on the board but on defense, misplaced pitches, walks, and errors cost Purchase a winnable game.
Junior Brandon Reybok took the ball for the Panthers and started his outing with a high-fly ball to right field. An error by senior right fielder Matthew Deall allowed for a lead-off triple for New Paltz. Reybok found himself in more trouble when the next batter he faced was hit by a pitch putting runners on first and second.
Then a Run's Batted In (RBI) single put New Paltz in front before Reybok was able to get back-to-back pop-outs. With two outs in the first, the Panthers almost escaped a jam but another RBI single for New Paltz put the Hawks up 2-0 before Reybok could get out of the first.
The Panthers quickly responded as junior Liam Daly, Skyline Conferences player of the week last week, crushed an opposite-field solo home run to put the Panthers back into striking distance. “I was focused on driving the ball to the opposite field,” said Daly. “I was just looking to get on base but it’s nice to be able to hit a home run.” This continues Daly’s scorching hot start to the season, as he bats .556 with three home runs.
Reybok bounced back from the first with a 1,2,3 second inning before surrendering a pair of runs in the third. This marked the end of his day and he finished with a final line of four hits, three earned runs, and a strikeout over three innings of work.
Daly was again able to cut the margin in half as junior Tristan Abreu scored on a sac fly in the bottom of the third.
From there, New Paltz outscored the Panthers 9-1 in the following three innings bringing the score to 13-3 entering the bottom of the 6th.
A single by freshman Lukes Vukdedaj sparked a rally for the Panthers, who then went on to score a run via a balk before senior Myles Scarry slapped a two-run triple to bring the score to 13-6.
The Panthers never found themselves able to string together another rally and ended up falling 15-8.
When asked about his team's performance, Head Coach Adam Taraska had this to say, “I don’t think we played well today, you're not gonna win games when the other team outplays you. They hit better than us, they pitched better than us, and they fielded better than us.”
However Scarry is sure they’ll bounce back saying, “It was a tough one but we’re a young team, we just gotta keep on putting in the work and we’ll continue to get better.”
The Panthers will look to make a splash this weekend in Florida as they play in the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational.
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