The Eastern baseball team can look back and attribute much of their success this season to their stellar play on defense.

The Panthers committed a league-low 66 errors and led the conference with a .968 fielding percentage. They also turned a conference best 61 double plays.

Defense is something that often gets overlooked by fans, but the truth of the matter is defense is just as important as every other phase of the game.

“The defense was a key to our success this year,” Eastern head coach Jim Schmitz said.

Schmitz said that good defense allows for pitchers to avoid having to worry about making the perfect pitch as they know the guys behind them will make the plays.

Assistant coach Sean Lyons is in charge of defense and brings the philosophy of focus on the fundamentals, make sure of one out and try and prevent the big inning to the team.

Lyons believes that pitching and defense is a mentality and that they go hand in hand.

“Pitching and defense win games,” Lyons said.

Eastern spends about 1/3 of their time working on defense through drills and repetition.

Schmitz said a big difference in the defense this year was the overall athletic ability of the players in the field.

Junior Adam Varrassi was moved to shortstop last year and freshmen centerfielder Brett Nommensen improved the range in the outfield, allowing for more plays to be made up the middle.

Varrassi and senior second baseman Blake Meyer worked hard to become the double play combination that led the conference.

“It takes time and is a long process,” Varrassi said. “Blake is the best second baseman I ever played with.”

The Panthers should be strong defensively next year once again, as they return most of their position players.

One position that Schmitz hopes to get better defensive production out of is catcher. The number one catcher, Joe Hernandez, was hurt all year and Eastern had a difficult time replacing him defensively.

Panther catchers threw out a conference low 14 base runners this season and had a conference high 23 passed balls.

That being said, Schmitz hopes to repeat this season’s defensive success, as he does not think a team can play much better than the Panthers did.

“I don’t know if we lost a game because of poor defense all season,” Schmitz said.