By Ben Diamond

After a rocky first series versus Salisbury University, the Oswego State baseball team went on a huge winning streak, including going 6-1 on their Florida road trip.

The early season success has helped to give head coach Scott Landers’ squad more confidence as they head into the middle of their season and start to face conference opponents. According to Landers, the more confidence his team has, the better they will be able to perform as the season goes on. Landers also said that being able to have success in Florida was a good sign for things to come further down the road.

“I think the big thing with Florida is, it’s a hot, tiring, grueling stretch,” Landers said. “You’re playing a lot of games in a short period of time. When you’re playing a lot of top 25 teams at that point, it’s tough. We played a grueling schedule and came out 10-3.”

Due to the injuries that were sustained during the trip to Florida, Landers was able to see more of some players that he wanted to take a look at. This not only gave some players the chance to step up and take on a bigger role, but it was able to help him figure out who he can use towards the end of the season, or when needed. 

“The biggest thing I took out of it, when one guy goes down, the next guy steps in,” Landers said. “We did that, now we come back 6-1 which is huge and we got four top 25 wins up to this point. I was excited to see guys step in and do their job.”

But, even though Landers liked what he saw during the Florida trip, he still believes that there are things that need to be polished in order to continue their winning ways. 

“We have to be more consistent on the mound,” Landers said. “The guys have really good stuff and they have had really good outings, but we have had some bad ones too. We need to be more consistent there and same with our at-bats. We are scoring a lot of runs but our average isn’t where we want it.”

Anthony Van Fossen is one of the players Landers pointed out that was inconsistent throughout the start of the season. In his first outing versus Salisbury University, Van Fossen went 6.0 innings, allowing no hits and one earned run. But, the game after versus Keystone College, Van Fossen only went 2.2 innings giving up 11 hits and seven earned runs.​​ The same cycle continued versus Ramapo College and Southern Maine University where he gave up one earned run and four earned runs respectively.

“You can look at Van Fossen who is one of our top arms, and see how well he did in two of his games and how bad the other two went,” Landers said. “He’s got the ability to be good everyday, he’s proven that. He’s gotta be able to navigate from start to start.”

On the other side of the ball, Ryan Enos has started the season hotter than any other hitter in the Laker lineup. To start the season, Enos is batting .558, with a 1.655 OPS, five home runs and 22 RBIs. He has also stolen 11 bases on 13 attempts. His hot hitting has earned him two straight Laker Athlete of the Week recognitions. While playing in Florida, the heat and humidity helped the ball fly farther than in the cold. Enos knows that adjustments need to be made in order to keep up his strong offensive output.

“The approach changes a little bit, but at the end of the day you are still trying to stay on time and get a good pitch to hit,” Enos said. “It doesn’t change too much, it’s just let’s be more aggressive on the bases and manufacture more runs than we would in Florida.”

Landers agrees with Enos that the change in approach from warm Florida to cold Oswego is going to be a very important piece in the season’s success. Also like Landers, Enos and the rest of his teammates are happy with the way they played in Florida. But as the conference season begins, they need to be ready to get back out there.

“The morale is high,” Enos said. “We are happy with what we have done so far, but we aren’t satisfied and we are just going to continue working towards being prepared for the upcoming games we got.”

The Lakers will continue to try and sustain their success as they play their first home games of the season on March 30 versus the SUNY Cobleskill Fighting Tigers. The Lakers have a  10-0 all-time record versus SUNY Cobleskill. The Fighting Tigers are 6-8 on the season.

Photos provided by Oswego State Athletics