This Week's Outlook: The College of Wooster baseball team (27-12, 12-6 North Coast Athletic Conference) is off to VA Memorial Stadium for this week's double-elimination NCAC Tournament. Wooster, seeded third, meets up with second-seeded Wittenberg University (27-10, 14-4 NCAC) in Thursday's 8 p.m. contest. NCAC champion Denison University (29-8, 16-2 NCAC) opens the tournament against fourth-seeded DePauw University (21-15, 12-6 NCAC), winners of 11 straight, at 3 p.m. The winner of games one and two open Friday's three-game slate at noon, with the elimination game between the game one and two losers set for 4 p.m. The loser of game three and the winner of game four meet in game five, which is slated for 7 p.m. on Friday, May 13. The championship round is scheduled for May 14 or May 15 with game six of the tournament at 1 p.m. and game seven, if necessary, set to begin 30 minutes after the conclusion of game six. If Wooster and DePauw are the two remaining teams after game five, the remaining game(s) of the tournament can take place on Saturday, May 14. If Denison and/or Wittenberg advance past game five, the remaining game(s) of the tournament will take place on Sunday, May 15, as both Denison and Wittenberg have commencement on Saturday, May 14, and NCAC policies prohibit teams from playing a conference event on their commencement. Please consult WoosterAthletics.com or @WoosterSports on Twitter for the most up-to-date schedule and game times.
Spectator Information: Admission for adults is $7.00 per day. Admission for children (18-and-under) and students from a NCAC institution (with their student ID) is $3.00 per day.
Media Coverage: Live stats and livestreaming for all games of the NCAC Tournament will be available at https://portal.stretchinternet.com/wooster/. Fans can also follow the team on Twitter @WoosterBaseball for periodic score updates and check for end-of-day recaps at WoosterAthletics.com.
Home and Away Designations: The top seed is the home team for games one through five of the NCAC Tournament. The winner of game three is the home team for game six and the visitors for the "if-necessary" game seven.
NCAC Tournament Success: Wooster has won a league-best 13 NCAC Tournaments and has made the championship round/championship series of the league tournament 21 times since the tournament started in 1991. Wooster has won four of the last nine league tournaments/championship series. Wooster is making its league-leading 30th appearance in the NCAC Tournament/NCAC Championship Series and the Fighting Scots remain the lone NCAC team to make the field every year. Wooster is 70-39 all-time in the NCAC Tournament, is 16-7 all-time versus Denison, 7-4 versus DePauw, and 13-3 versus Wittenberg.
Must Sweep: Wooster wound up being faced with a must-sweep situation on Sunday against Kenyon College, or else the Scots would have been the odd team out of this week's four-team tournament. Junior center fielder Jack Whitehouse (Asheville, N.C./Asheville) laced a walk-off, bases-loaded single into left field in the bottom of the 11th inning of Wooster's 4-3 win over Kenyon. Then, Wooster pulled away with a 16-5 game-two victory. DePauw winning more games against Allegheny College than Wooster won against Kenyon or the Gators sweeping the Tigers and the Lords sweeping the Scots would denied Wooster a spot in this week's tournament.
A Quick Look at Wooster-DePauw Doubleheader: Senior shortstop Tyler Chumita (Hilliard, Ohio/Hilliard Darby) rejuvenated Wooster with a three-run home run in game two, then kept adding to his line, as Wooster bounced back from a 12-4 loss to DePauw with a 13-6 game-two win on April 2. Chumita hit a pair of round-trippers in the game-two win and finished with seven RBI, the most since All-American Dan Harwood had seven against Oberlin College on April 18, 2018.
A Quick Look at Wooster-Denison Doubleheader: Senior center fielder Ben Gbur (Hilliard, Ohio/Hilliard Darby) found his groove with six hits, five RBI, and a home run over a doubleheader, as Wooster split with NCAC frontrunning Denison, which was ranked 25th at the time in the D3baseball.com/National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Top 25 Poll. Denison took game one from Wooster 6-5, while the Scots won the nightcap 10-6.
A Quick Look at Wooster-Wittenberg Doubleheader: Decisive victories with one win to each side continued to be the storyline for Wooster's first week of May, with the Scots bouncing back from a 13-3 game-one loss at Wittenberg on May 4 with a 13-7 nightcap victory. Wooster's game-two win gave the program its 25 victory, marking the 10th straight full season the Scots have won at least 25 games.
Chumita On Cusp of Single-Season Record: Simply put Wooster has a storied history in baseball and records are hard to come by with all of the great players who have come through the program over the years. Many of Wooster's records have seemingly stood the test of time, but one in particular – single-season RBI – is being challenged this year. W Association Hall of Famer Rick Sforzo, a three-time America Baseball Coaches Association All-American, tallied a single-season program record 77 RBI in 1986, a year in which Wooster played 50 games. All-American Dave Kessler knocked in 75 runs that same season, a total that was matched 11 years later by W Association Hall of Famer and two-time All-American Matt Jackson, who helped lead the Scots to the Div. III World Series and a school-record 46 wins in 1997. So, who is next on the list? Well, that would be Chumita, who has 74 RBI in just 39 games. Chumita has 20 multi-RBI games on the year, including 14 with at least three. Even more impressive, Chumita surpassed 70 with just 19 of his 60 hits going for extra bases. Chumita became the seventh Scot with a 70-RBI season on Sunday against Kenyon, and the first since Harwood's 72-RBI campaign in 2018. Chumita's 74 RBI are 26 more than any other player in the NCAC this year.
Five-Tool: Gbur checks all the boxes when it comes to the "five tools" – hitting, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing. Running is the emphasis of this note, as Gbur has touched home 65 times on the year, marking the 11th-most in single-season program history. Gbur will move into the top-10 on the single-season leaderboard with his next run. In terms of "standing the test of time," W Association Hall of Famer and two-time All-American Trevor Urban still holds the single-season record at 79 from the 1997 season. Gbur's also at 23 steals on the year, and will move into the single-season top-10 with one more. Single-season steals is a record held by 1994 All-American Terry Gladis, who swiped 44 bases and followed that up with 35 more the following year.
Quarter-Century Club: Senior right fielder Ben Hines (Farmington, Minn./Lakeville South) stole his 25 base of the year during Sunday's sweep over Kenyon. Hines is tied for the seventh-most stolen bases in single-season history, and he is the first Scot with at least 25 in a year since 2009 All-American Sean Karpen swiped 25 in 2008.
Not Since 1944: No Wooster pitcher had struck out at least 15 batters in a game since 1944, that is until sophomore right-hander Corey Knauf (Vienna, Va./Bishop O'Connell) fanned 15 Williams College hitters during a 16-4 win on March 25. Knauf, pitching in Chain O' Lakes Stadium, former spring training ballpark of the Cleveland Guardians, logged the third-most strikeouts in program history and the most since Stan Partenheimer's 19-strikeout game in 1944. Knauf struck out the side in the first and second innings, and had seven strikeouts through two frames, due to an Eph batter reaching via a passed ball. The strikeout haul climbed to 10 in the third inning, then Knauf struck out two in the fifth, two in the sixth, and Nate Orluk watched a pitch zoom by for a called strike three that ended the game in the seventh.
Another Masterpiece: Knauf nearly did something no Wooster pitcher has ever done on April 6 – log a 15-strikeout game and a no-hitter. Knauf carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning of Wooster's 10-0 run-rule win over Hiram College. Hiram center fielder Curtis Caithaml laced a leadoff single up the middle in the seventh for the Terriers' lone hit of the game. Knauf, who logged his first career shutout, struck out five and faced just four batters over the minimum.
Mr. Electric: Junior left-hander Christian Johnston was named to D3baseball.com's Team of the Week for games played April 25-May 1 after retiring all 12 batters he faced in a span of three outings. Johnston, who earned a win and two saves on the week, fired two innings of six-up, six-down ball in Wooster's 13-5 win over the University of Mount Union on April 26. Two days later, he set down the Purple Raiders in order in the bottom of the 10th inning in the Scots' 10-8 win. He entered game two of the Denison twin bill with the tying run on deck and slammed the door shut on the Big Red by setting down all three batters he faced in the Scots' 10-6 win.
"Run Baby Run": If there was a contest for most interesting walkup in Div. III, first-year second baseman Nick Pett (Perrysburg, Ohio/St. John's Jesuit) would be in the running, as "Run Baby Run" by Caspar Babypants is his song. Pett ran his way to D3baseball.com Team of the Week honors for games played April 18-24. Pett's week opened with a walk-off pinch-hit single in a 5-4 win over Oberlin College on April 20, then he earned the save in the Scots' 5-3 nightcap win, recording the final two outs in his collegiate pitching debut. Pett went on to earn a spot in the starting lineup for the rest of the week at second base, where he went 7-for-12 with seven runs, two doubles, a triple, and his first collegiate home run over the three-game weekend slate.
Utility Star: Utility players have been a key part of Wooster's success in recent seasons. All-American Chandler Dippman started his career as Wooster's everyday third baseman and by the end of his time donning the Black & Gold worked his way up to the ace of the Scots' pitching staff, evidenced by earning the game ball in game one of the 2018 Mideast Regional and Div. III World Series. This year, sophomore Eli Westrick (Ashland, Ore./Ashland) is Mr. Utility for Wooster. Westrick, who splits time between second base and designated hitter when not on the bump, leads Wooster with a .398 average (41-for-103) and is tied for fourth on the team with 30 RBI. His five wins (5-1, 2 saves) are tops on the staff, and his 3.68 ERA leads the way among those with at least 20 innings pitched. Westrick's 51 1/3 innings are the second-most on the team.