They’ve got a whopping 110 home runs this season, obliterating the school record of 81 from two years ago.
Many of those tours around the bases are leisurely trots.
“I don’t want to discredit our guys by any means, but I know home runs are up in college baseball. I don’t know if it’s the bats or the balls or something else. It’s getting back to the late ‘90s with Gorilla Ball, as they used to call it,” coach Alex Sogard said.
“But I WILL say our lineup is so good. It’s so talented. And we have so many power threats.”
The Raiders went into the week tied for 10th nationally in homers. Northern Kentucky has the next-most in the league with 85, and Oakland is third with 57.
“We have guys on our bench — who had to play because of injuries — with eight or nine home runs and hitting .350. Because everyone is healthy, it’s hard to find room for them now,” Sogard said.
“It puts us in a good position if we need a pinch-hitter late in the game. We have a lot of experience in our lineup.”
Ben Vore has a team-high 19 homers, while Jay Luikart and Boston Smith have 18.
Andrew Patrick, who missed 22 games with a fractured thumb, set the school record last year with 20.
The Raiders (31-22) — who go into the league tourney at home as the top seed and will play at 11 a.m. Thursday (against an opponent to be determined) — are hitting .316 as a team with leadoff hitter Julian Greenwell setting the pace with a .404 average.
They’re also tied for eighth in the nation in runs with 484, which is 9.1 per game.
The school record for runs was set three years ago at 502.
But the pitching staff is mostly filled with young arms and has an 8.35 ERA (that ranks 275th out of 295 Division-I teams). The Raiders haven’t quite recovered from losing 2023 HL pitcher of the year Sebastian Gongora, who transferred to Louisville.
“It’s been a struggle. Some of our guys have never pitched in these situations,” Sogard said.
The sixth-year coach found some consolation in the regular-season finale with the league title on the line — even though the Raiders needed a three-run walk-off homer in the ninth to pull out a 12-9 win over NKU.
“That’s got to be the tightest finish to the Horizon League regular-season ever — coming down to the last inning of the last game with a walk-off home run. It was as close to a tournament feel as we’ve ever had in the regular season,” Sogard said.
“But you look at who we threw: a true freshman started, a true freshman came out of the bullpen for the next two innings, another true freshman threw an inning and change. We threw four true freshmen and a sophomore. All those guys had never pitched in that kind of environment, and most of them did pretty well.
“We’ve pitched better in the last month than we have all year. But, obviously, our offense has carried us, and we’ll look for them to keep doing that.”
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