The baseball team returned to the comforts of the Bill Beck Field this past week, but their struggles continued. PHOTO CREDIT: gorhody.com
The University of Rhode Island Baseball team started their season with a month of strikeouts and groundouts, tallying a record of 0-13 to start the year.
However, since returning home to Bill Beck Field, the Rams have improved their play on both sides of the ball, resulting in the squad winning two out of their last six games this past week.
The first game of the turnaround came against Sacred Heart University on March 16, a 10-6 win in dramatic fashion.
The Pioneers did not hesitate to score in the opening inning. The Rams countered in their half of the inning when a sacrifice fly to left field by Anthony DePino scored Jack Cucinotta, tying the game at one heading into the second inning.
The Pioneers then went on to have a huge third inning, tallying four runs and crossing the plate once more in the fifth, increasing their lead to 6-1.
DePino struck once again in the bottom of the sixth with a 2-run home run cutting the lead to 6-3. Soon after, the Sacred Heart lead had vanished, due to a 2-RBI double from Eric Genther, who later scored himself from a sacrifice fly from Alex Ramirez.
Finally, in the bottom of the ninth inning, Cucinotta launched a walk-off grand slam, bringing the final score to 10-6 in favor of the Rams.
The home run was not only a highlight of Cucinotta’s season, but of his entire career.
“Something I will never forget,” Cucinotta said. “A walk-off grand slam is kind of every kid’s dream, so that was pretty cool.”
The walk-off was not the first of Cucinotta’s long baseball career, but it certainly had been a long time since the last one.
“It was actually the first walk-off home run I’ve hit since I was 12 years old on the little league fields,” Cucinotta revealed.
Riding off the momentum of their first win, the Rams continued on their homestand to face their in-state rival Bryant in a three-game series.
The first game of the series was a nail-biter all the way through, but Bryant was able to edge out the Rams in extra innings.
“It was frustrating [because] we had multiple chances to win that game,” Head Coach Raphael Cerrato said. “It was just a frustrating loss.”
After forcing extra innings, a hit batter alongside a grand slam from Bryant gave them an 8-3 lead in the top of the 10th. While a resilient Rams team still attempted to scrape back in the bottom half of the inning, they just came up short, dropping the game 8-6.
The second game of the series lasted much longer than anticipated, as the game was postponed until the next day due to darkness after the seventh inning.
The Rams went home that night with a 3-run lead that they would have to defend the next day, and defense was all the Rams played Sunday morning.
URI’s Sean Sposato faced six Bryant batters in the last two innings. Three were retired via strikeout, two via groundout, and one via flyout. The Rams escaped the two-day contest with an 11-8 win.
“[Sposato] came in and he was just dominant,” Cerrato said. “That was the best I’ve ever seen him.”
However, pitching woes came back to haunt the Rams in their final game of the series, a close 3-2 loss that resulted from several URI pitching errors.
Bryant’s game-winning run was scored in an inning that included a hit batter and two wild pitches. However, Cerrato is not overly concerned with the errors.
“I thought we pitched very well,” he said. “Overall if you give up three runs in a game, I expect our offense to score four.”
The team ended the week with losses against Central Connecticut State and Merrimack.
The Rams are back in action this weekend, when they take on the UConn Huskies. First pitch from Storrs is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m.