It is a little more than halfway through the season and Oberlin baseball has experienced a rocky first half. The Yeomen are sporting a 5-18 record and are 0-12 in conference play. Oberlin started the season losing their first nine meetings. Then on March 29 they gathered their first win, which came against Williams in a 15-10 slugfest. After a 4-0 loss to Hartwick the Yeomen put together their only winning streak of the season, winning two in a row against the same Hartwick team.

Since then the Yeomen have lost four to Kenyon College, beat Case Western Reserve University, lost their next four to Allegheny and beat Lake Erie College last Monday, 9-3. The team is hoping they can build some momentum off of this solid victory in which senior second baseman Nick Broughton, junior first basemen Joe Sheehan, senior catcher Kyle Neumeier and junior center fielder Chad Kutting all collected multiple hits.

Sheehan had the biggest game, going 3-4 with a double and two RBIs, while Neumeier provided the power with a home run. Also chipping in with an RBI was senior third baseman Andrew Caprariello.

On the mound, first-year Alex Sugiura was impressive, putting together a solid six and one third innings, surrendering only four hits and three runs (only one of which was earned). Sophomore Olin Bekis came on in relief for Sugiura and pitched two and a third innings for shutout relief.

On Wednesday, Oberlin will travel to Strongsville, Ohio to take on Notre Dame College in a non-conference game. The Yeomen hope they can duplicate the impressive performance that they put together Monday.

Offense has not been a big problem for the Oberlin squad this season; they are batting an impressive .308 and have scored 148 runs. This averages to about seven runs per game, which should be enough to put together quite a few victories. Pitching, however, seems to be the team’s Achilles heel.

Thus far in the season the Yeomen’s pitching staff has a cumulative earned run average of 9.5, meaning they get outscored by an average of two-and-a-half runs per game.

Hopefully the outing that Segiura put together last time out will carry over to the other starters.

With 18 games left there is still plenty of time for the Yeomen to turn around. If the pitching can settle down and the offense can continue to do what it has been doing there might be some excitement in Oberlin come the end of the season.