“It’s not easy to do,” said seventh-year coach Alex Sogard, who has led the team to six consecutive titles (the 2020 season was cancelled). “People could definitely take it for granted. But we were talking as a coaching staff, and we have a new pitching guy (Travis Ferrick) — he’s a stud —and he said it’s the first time he’s won the regular-season. That hit me.
“It’s definitely a huge accomplishment. It’s something some kids never get to do in their careers.”
The Raiders are leading the league in hitting at .295 and in pitching with a 6.33 ERA.
After stumbling to a collective 8.20 ERA last season, the retooled staff has displayed a much nastier arsenal.
“A lot of young arms are pitching high-leverage innings. They’re getting more and more comfortable and are starting to see what they’re really capable of doing,” Sogard said.
Cam Allen, a sophomore from Akron, is tied for second in the league in wins with a 5-2 record and is among the HL leaders in ERA at 5.36 and strikeouts with 52 in 43.2 innings.
“We just have a lot more weapons to go to than maybe we have the last few years,” Sogard said.
Leadoff-hitter Hunter Warren has been doing his job. The redshirt freshman from Moline, Ill., is third in the league in hitting at .367 and eighth in on-base percentage at .455.
JP Peltier, a sophomore from Chaminade Julienne, is second in homers with 15 and sixth in RBIs with 46 while also batting .300.
Boston Smith, a Vandalia Butler product who hit 19 homers last year (one off the school record), is third in the league in OBP at .493 and is tied for fourth in homers with 12.
“Hunter Warren at the top has been our table setter. And we’ve shuffled the lineup and slid Boston down (to the sixth hitter) just to try to give us more ‘length.’ It’s really made our lineup dangerous one through nine,” Sogard said.
The Raiders (30-15 overall) have a three-game series at home against NKU starting at 3 p.m. Friday.
After facing Kent State on the road Tuesday, they finish the regular-season with three games at Purdue Fort Wayne and then host the HL tourney May 21-24.
Their seven-year championship streak is one short of the league record set by UIC, which won eight straight from 2002-09. But they can still do something this year no other team has done.
They’re flirting with the best league record since the HL started playing at least 20 games in 1989.
They have an .874 winning percentage. Wright State currently has the all-time best mark by going 25-4 for a .862 success rate in 2014.
But while it’d be nice to pull off, Sogard only wants his players to keep riding their momentum into the league tourney and beyond.
“We’ve kind of found different ways to win. We can win low-scoring games, and we can win the shoot-out, too. That’s a good sign going into the end of the year,” he said.
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