RallyNorth.net

Which Royals team will appear come tourney time

Thursday, May, 29 By John Shimer
Staff writer

It's tough to say which Georgetown baseball team might show up when the squad opens the Division 3 North Tournament against Winthrop on Friday.

Will it be the Royals team that scored seven or more runs 12 times this year? That would be the same team that scored an average of 15 runs in five straight wins to close the regular season.

Or will it be the team that scored a combined five runs against the five Cape Ann League champions | North Reading, North Andover, Masconomet, Wilmington, and Newburyport?

No. 8 Georgetown better hope it can match its offensive output of late against No. 9 Winthrop, otherwise the hosts might see a first-round exit for the second consecutive season.

Only North Reading bested Georgetown in the CAL in the category of scoring seven or more runs | doing so 13 times (Masconomet tied Georgetown). But no team in the CAL has shown such highs and lows over long stretches like the Royals.

Although their offensive prowess of late may be more indicative of the pitching it faced, Georgetown coach Mark Rowe said he believes his team jelled when it finally had to deal with adversity, which led to the offensive explosion.

"Cohesiveness," replied Rowe to the question of where his team has grown the most this season. "Not that we were ever fractured, but in a lot of ways the four-game losing streak brought us together. There was a collective sigh of relief when it was over, but everyone was pulling for everyone trying to prove we weren't the team that went 0-4."

The Royals also got back to the basics, hitting off tees, spending more time in the cages, and getting some good advice from batting coach Peter Yates.

What makes this year's Georgetown team more dangerous is the fact that the offense has a plethora of hitters batting over .300.

In year's past the team relied heavily on Tim Holland | who this year broke the school record for runs scored in a season (30) | but with Holland's reputation preceding him and thus seeing fewer good pitches to hit, it has been the other guys that have raised their play.

"The team average speaks for itself," Rowe said. "In year's past our average might have been in the .300s, but that was skewed when Tim (Holland) was hitting .550," Rowe explained. "This year we didn't have that real high-end guy, it's more of a team average where we go six or seven deep in the .300s, which is nice to see."

Guys like Anthony Conte, the team's table-setter in the leadoff spot, and Andrew Barba, the team's leading RBI-producer presently sitting at 27, have emerged as big bats in the Royals lineup.

"We've scored first in each one of the last five games (all wins), and that starts with the leadoff guy Anthony getting on base," Rowe said. "We feel very confident that we can manufacture runs when he gets on.

"Andrew, offensively, has been our big RBI guy with a lot of clutch hits," Rowe continued. "We're counting on him. A lot of the reason Tim broke the school record for runs scored was because Andrew was hitting behind him in the 5-hole."

Lacking perhaps only power production as a team, the player that is motivated by his teammates' chants of, 'As you go, we go,' said Georgetown's strength at the plate is its ability to put pressure on a defense.

"We're not a power-hitting team that hits 400-foot shots into the trees," Conte said. "We have a lot of kids that hit line drives and produce runs left and right. That's the real Georgetown, the team that comes out swinging, and not keeping the bats on the shoulders like we were during that spell."

If Conte's version of the real Georgetown come to play, all bets are off as to how far the Royals can go.