Baseball team in final series

By Pete Mollica

The Penguins travel to Milwaukee with hopes of keeping their No. 3 seed.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State baseball team will play its final three games of the regular season today and tomorrow in a big Horizon League matchup at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Penguins (21-30, 11-11 Horizon) are holding down third place in the conference standings, but could fall as low as sixth place with a poor showing against the Panthers.

YSU coach Rich Pasquale is excited about the upcoming series and about the way his Penguins have been playing.

YSU is coming off impressive victories Monday and Tuesday, winning at West Virginia 13-9 and then coming back to defeat Kent State 14-9 at Cene Park.

“The confidence is building and at the right time,” said Pasquale. “The way we played against West Virginia and Kent State was very impressive.”

“If we jump out to a lead and then fall behind these kids are now believing that they can come back just like they did in the last two games,” he added. “Early in the season if we blew a lead we always hit a lull and that was it, we just never came back.”

The Penguins need at least one win against the Panthers to assure themselves of not having a chance to fall down to the No. 6 slot in the standings and be forced to play Tuesday in the Horizon League tournament’s play-in game against No. 7 Butler.

To stay in the No. 3 slot the Penguins need at least one win and Cleveland State and Valparaiso to lose at least one game in their three-game weekend series against Butler and UIC, respectively.

“It’s going to be an exciting trip for us since we’ll be playing in Miller Park, home of the National League’s Milwaukee Brewers,” Pasquale said.

“Since this will be the first time this season [the Panthers] have played at Miller Park, nobody will really have a home field advantage going in,” he added. “Our kids are excited about the chance to play in a big league park.”

The two teams will play a doubleheader today at 5:30 and 8 p.m., then a single game Friday at 2 p.m.

Pasquale said that he will start his ace right hander Aaron Swenson in the opener today. Swenson, just a sophomore, is 6-3 overall this season and 6-1 in the Horizon League with five complete games. He has twice been named the Horizon League’s pitcher of the week.

The Penguins have plenty of offensive support as they have six players hitting over .300 for the year, led by redshirt freshman Joe Iacobucci of Boardman with a .375 average. Senior Erich Diedrich is hitting .353, while the others are sophomore Anthony Porter (.319), senior Sean Lucas (.316), sophomore Eric Marzec (.315) and senior Josh Page (.307).

YSU will host the Horizon League Tournament which begins Tuesday at Eastwood Field.

mollica@vindy.com