Flames win two in first home series

After a rough start to the season, the Liberty Flames baseball team managed to improve its hitting and work against the time constraints of two seven-inning games to win two of its three first home games against Binghamton this past weekend at Worthington Stadium.

“We had a pretty tough two weekends before this, so we had to work really hard at practice to make sure we didn’t have the same mishaps as we did before,” junior shortstop Matthew Williams said.

Senior pitcher Keegan Linza said he feels that the team’s slower start impacts the rest of the season.

“Every game is important, but especially now that we have started out slower than we expected,” Linza said.

Although the team managed to get nine runs in its last game of the series against North Florida, the rest of the games this season have brought in very few runs for the Flames.

However the games against Binghamton were different. The Flames scored 12 runs in their win on Friday night and nine runs in their Saturday win. Even the game that they lost was a high-scoring one.

“Our bats have really come alive this weekend,” Linza said. “We’re starting to score more runs than we have the first two weekends, so that is a positive sign. Also, it’s nice to be home and have the fan support.”

The Flames had their struggles during the series with a loss in the first game on Saturday, but the explosion of the bats encouraged the team.

“We hit the ball pretty well,” Williams said. “A couple of mishaps right in the middle of the game caused the loss, but the second game we came out and swung the bats like we know we can.”

Coming into the series, the Flames knew that Binghamton could hit fairly well, and they saw that proven during Saturday’s loss, according to senior second baseman Austin Taylor.

“We gave up two really big hits to them,” Williams said. “One ball down the baseline brought in three runs, and they ended up hitting a grand slam … Just two big hits for them was the only difference.”

Taylor said that they were all disappointed with the loss on Saturday, but felt like they were able to gather themselves together and come back for a high-scoring win in the second game of the doubleheader.

According to Linza, Williams and Taylor, working with only seven innings in both games on Saturday forced the team to take a strong lead early on.

“Obviously the seven inning games go by a lot faster,” Taylor said. “We knew off the bat that we’d have to take advantage of every opportunity because we wouldn’t have a chance late in the game to make up for lost ground.”

According to Linza, they were able to do that in the second game with the team scoring seven runs on six hits in the fourth inning and an overall total of nine runs. Taylor put on a very solid performance, hitting his first homerun of the season and scoring four more of the Flames total.

The Flames next game will be at home against the College of William and Mary on March 8 at 3 p.m.