In baseball, many teams experience some sort of dry season during the course of a long season. Utah is currently in the middle of a drought.
For the last few weeks, the Utes have struggled mightily at the plate, having trouble recording an abundance of hits. This not only keeps them from scoring runs, but it also leads to them giving up early leads to their opponents. The players realize they are in a rut but continue to stick to their game plan, hoping to get to the end of this slump soon.
“Our style is a scrappy team,” said senior infielder TJ Bennett. “We’re going to have close games. We know that about our offense, and we’ve accepted that, and that is okay with us. We are embracing that.”
Sophomore Kody Davis said one of the biggest problems the Utes are facing right now is timely hitting.
“We manage to get guys on base, and then we get them into scoring position and we get super tight at the plate,” he said. “We start thinking too much, and we can’t get the job done. So what we really need to bear down on is being comfortable in that situation and understanding that we’ve prepared and we can get the job done.”
Bennett said successful innings include scoring one or more run during an inning. He continued to say that if the Utes can muster up five or six innings where they score at least one run, they should be well off in the game.
That is easier said than done, however, as Utah ranks in the bottom two teams of the conference in a wide range of offensive statistics. The Utes are currently sitting in last place in the Pac-12 in batting average, slugging percentage, runs scored, runs batted in, doubles hit, triples hit and home runs. They are also the only team in the conference who has not registered a home run thus far in the season.
In addition to those alarming conference rankings, no Utah player on the team is batting over .300.
Davis said things need to change, but they can’t let these statistics get to their heads.
“It’s frustrating,” he said. “We can’t dwell on it. We need to focus on the day ahead of us, one pitch at a time. Those numbers will start to pick up eventually if we stay with our approach.”
Despite all the negatives, Bennett said the team’s morale and attitude took a turn for the better this last weekend inCalifornia. The team is starting to have fun again while playing the game. The Utes had a multitude of hits against the Golden Bears, and that boosted the confidence of the team to a point it hasn’t been since the start of the season.
“I would say before this weekend, [attitude] was definitely down,” Bennett said. “Coming around the park was kind of a down feeling. Even showing up for the games, it was a lot of defeat … We turned a page this weekend.”
[email protected]