Eastern’s baseball team is much better than their 6-14 overall record would suggest.

The Panthers played several tough teams in their pre-Ohio Valley Conference schedule, including the Alabama Crimson Tide, Mississippi State and Central Arkansas among others.

But as we saw when the Panthers opened their conference schedule last weekend, they’re a tough team to beat, as Eastern Kentucky had to take them to 10 innings to beat them on Saturday before the Panthers swept a double header with the Colonels on Sunday.

In their wins over EKU, the Panthers showed a combination of clutch hitting and outstanding pitching along with solid and occasionally spectacular defense.

The Panther power bats are finally starting to come around, evidenced by home runs hit Sunday by red-shirt juniors TJ McManus and Ben Thoma. McManus’s homer was his first as a Panther and a grand slam that keyed a five-run Panther outburst in game one of Sunday’s double header sweep.

The Panther bats struggled a bit early in the season, but they are finally turning things around, now their only concern is the number of runners they’re leaving on base. Once Eastern’s lineup starts driving in all the guys who are getting on base, they will be even more lethal than they currently are.

Another area where the Panthers have shown improvement over their pre-OVC schedule is the pitching staff. The Panther bullpen in particular was strong throughout the early season and has continued to be consistently solid through the Panthers’ first OVC weekend.

The starting rotation has finally found its stride to match the bullpen it seems, as red-shirt junior Mike Hoekstra pitched a complete game in Memphis 10 days ago and he threw five shutout innings last Saturday before the Colonels finally got to him.

In addition to Hoekstra finding his groove, freshmen Luke Bushur and Christian Slazinik both had great outings to earn wins Sunday, as each set a new career-high in strikeouts.

Something else that has been a focus point for Eastern this year that looked much improved last weekend over the early season is the defense.

The Panthers struggled in their pre-OVC schedule to play consistent defense, but they looked sharp in the field against EKU, especially on Sunday when several Panthers made great plays with the leather, especially sophomore third-baseman Ryan Dineen and senior shortstop Cam Strang.

The Panthers have dealt with their share of struggles in the early season, but they look to have their issues ironed out and appear headed in the right direction as they continue their OVC schedule.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 581-7944 or “a href=”mailto: bmkupiec@eiu.edu”>bmkupiec@eiu.edu