ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The Navy baseball program (16-13) begins its postseason slate this weekend in the Patriot League Semifinals against Lehigh (21-16). The Midshipmen enter the tournament at the fourth seed with the Mountain Hawks coming in as the No. 1 seed after winning the regular-season title. The semifinal series begins on Saturday with a doubleheader starting at noon in Bethlehem, Pa., where the if necessary game in the best-of-three series will follow on Sunday at 1 p.m.
Navy comes into the weekend after winning the Star over Army and the Midshipmen's final win of the series locked them into the league tournament as the No. 4 seed. After Navy dropped the first game of the weekend, 6-1, it rebounded to win the second game, 8-7, to split the doubleheader last Saturday. Then on Sunday, the Midshipmen rallied from down two runs in its final at-bat to beat Army in extra innings, 10-5.
Coming into the weekend, Navy had seven players named the All-Patriot League teams with
Nico Valdez and
Christian Policelli leading the group with first-team honors.
Charlie Connolly,
Trey Braithwaite,
Zach Stevens,
Logan Keller and
Zane Raba were all named to the second team.
As a team, Navy leads the Patriot League with a .286 batting average and Valdez leads the team with a .341 mark, which is third in the league heading into the postseason. Stevens and Keller have paced the middle of the lineup with 27 and 32 RBIs, respectively. In just 29 games, Keller's 32 RBIs lead the Patriot League and he is second on the team with a .327 average. Stevens has a team-best .546 slugging percentage behind eight doubles and four home runs, which both lead the team. In Patriot League contests, Stevens boasts a .607 slugging mark, which is tops in the league.
On the mound, Navy has compiled a 6.62 ERA in 232-1/3 innings of work where the staff has struck out 218 batters. Connolly has paced the staff with 42 strikeouts in 32-1/3 innings and has recorded an ERA of 3.62. In six appearances and four starts,
Jared Leins has a team-low 1.62 ERA over 16-2/3 innings.
Lehigh led the Patriot League with eight All-League honorees and produced the player, pitcher and coach of the year in Casey Rother, Mason Black and Sean Leary, respectively. Coming into the tournament as the No. 1 seed, the Mountain Hawks finished the regular season with a record of 21-16 overall and a 17-10 Patriot League record. The pitching staff has guided Lehigh the season with a 4.24 ERA to lead the league. Black paces the staff with a 2.51 ERA and 90 strikeouts but Matt Svanson is just behind with a 2.73 ERA and 57 punchouts.
At the plate, Rother's .350 average is second overall in the Patriot League and he has also compiled a .518 slugging percentage and a .441 on-base percentage. Eric Cichocki and Joe Gorla round out the .300 hitters for the Mountain Hawks with averages of .323 and .302, respectively. Gorla and Rother are tied for the team lead with 29 RBIs each.
Lehigh won the regular-season series over Navy this spring winning four of the six meetings. However, the Midshipmen won the last game as they closed out their home schedule with a 7-2 win over Lehigh to start the month of May. In the all-time series, Navy holds a record of 90-48 over Lehigh in a series that began in 1895.
The winner of this weekend's Lehigh-Navy series will advance to the Patriot League Championship Series against the winner of No. 2-seeded Army and No. 3-seeded Lafayette. The final round of the league tournament will take place at the highest remaining seed later this month.
