Ohio played its first Mid-American Conference series of the season over the weekend against Bowling Green and lost two of three games in the series.
The Bobcats (12-10, 1-2 MAC) have shown specific strengths, particularly in hitting, in games within series this season. But they’ve also shown inconsistencies in hitting within a given series.
In some games, Ohio falls into early deficits that it sometimes can’t come back from. For example, the Bobcats lost 3-1 against the Falcons on Sunday during the series finale.
The Bobcats were down 3-0 through the first five innings and tallied their first run in the top of the sixth. Ohio had seven hits, but it only produced one run out of those hits.
Ohio scored 16 runs in the series against Bowling Green. The most runs Ohio has had in a series this season is 25 against Rider, the first series of the season.
The least amount of runs Ohio has had in a series is 14 in a four-game series against Nebraska-Omaha. With Ohio 22 games into its season, the team is batting .274. Rudy Rott and Nick Bredeson are the team’s two best hitters; Rott is batting .404, and Bredeson is batting .312.
Within series, Ohio sometimes hasn't strung together games in which it posts a decent number of hits. That inconsistency was shown in the Bowling Green series over the weekend.
And in not posting a consistent number of hits between games, Ohio’s runs have also fluctuated within series.
In the series’ first game Friday, the Bobcats had six hits. That’s about three hits fewer than the 9.59 hits Ohio averages per game. On Saturday, though, the Bobcats doubled the number of hits from Friday and had 12 hits. In that game, the Bobcats also had 11 runs, seven more than the four they had Friday.
Tanner Piechnick, Tony Giannini and Ryan Sargent all had two hits Saturday, and Rott led the team with three. On Sunday, the Bobcats went below their average of 9.59 hits again, only posting seven.
When the Bobcats score six or more runs, something they’ve done 10 times this season, only once have they recorded fewer than nine hits. That game was the series finale against Maine, when Ohio won 6-2.
If the Bobcats can produce a bevy of hits, they’re usually in position to win. When the Bobcats tally nine or more hits, they’re 11-4.
Ohio will play Morehead State on the road Tuesday, and it will have its home-opener this weekend against Northern Illinois.
