Preview: Maryland baseball carries four-game win streak into weekend series at Charlotte

After an ugly loss to VCU in Maryland baseball’s midweek matchup last week, the Terps rebounded in its four-game homestand, outscoring their opponents 29-12.

Maryland (10-3) secured its first series sweep of the season against Bryant over the weekend — the first under head coach Matt Swope.

The Terps have been unbeatable at home in the early season, going 6-0 and averaging 9.5 runs per game. Maryland also found various ways to win during its recent homestand, most notably a 3-2 win on Tuesday over Delaware to close out the stretch.

The win was highlighted by great pitching and team defense, as the Terps used just two pitchers. Maryland has been able to rest its bullpen in home games, as the staff has only used ten relievers in the six home games this year.

“The pitchers won the game for us,” Kevin Keister said after the Delaware game. “We scored three runs…and we won. We haven’t done that many times over the past couple of years.”

The Terps went 3-7 last year in games where the team scored three or fewer runs.

Maryland’s pitching has drastically improved between this year’s team and last year’s team through its first 13 games. The staff had given up 95 runs at this point in last year’s season, whereas this season the group has only given up 62.

“I gotta give [pitching coach Jimmy Jackson] and the staff a lot of credit,” Swope said. “They’re easily the reason why we won some of these close games…we haven’t really been accustomed to that in the past of being able to play really good defense and only scoring a certain amount of runs.”

It is worth noting that by this point in last year’s campaign, the Terps had played five games against ranked opponents — four against Ole Miss and one against Vanderbilt. This year’s squad has yet to play against a ranked foe.

Maryland will likely start Kenny Lippman and Logan Koester in the squad’s first two games against Charlotte (7-6) in the series this weekend. The two have started the first two games in the Terps’ prior weekend series and have been the team’s best-starting pitchers through the early part of the season. Opposing hitters bat below .200 against them, and both feature ERAs below 2.30.

Charlotte enters Friday’s matchup most recently off a 5-2 win over Western Carolina on Tuesday. The 49ers’ first six games featured lots of offense, with one team scoring at least eight runs in each contest — Charlotte went 2-4 over that stretch. But the staff’s pitching has improved over the past seven games, limiting opponents to three or fewer runs in five of those games.

The 49ers’ hot pitching staff may pose a threat to a Terps lineup averaging 7.77 runs per game. Maryland has gotten production up and down its order, as all of the team’s usual starters have at least seven RBIs, and five players have double-digit RBIs. 

One of the Terps’  most noticeable bats this season is Jacob Orr. Orr is second on the team in batting average and on-base percentage among players who have started in at least four games. 

“He’s been steady in the lineup first and someone that we can look out for a consistent source of production,” Swope said. “He’s played plus defense in the outfield as well.”

Orr started a little over half of the team’s games last year, but has started in ten of the team’s 13 games this year and has appeared in every game. Orr has recorded at least one hit in all of his starts this season and reached base in all but one of his appearances, forcing Swope to keep him in the lineup.

The first pitch between Maryland and Charlotte will be at 3 p.m. on Friday and will begin the first of the Terps’ seven-game road trip.