Mercer carries momentum into ‘second season’
The Mercer baseball team has had a strong start to the 2017 season, but things get serious for the Bears starting this weekend.
Mercer enters Southern Conference play with a series against East Tennessee State, beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday.
“ETSU is playing really well; they’re pitching well,” said Mercer head coach Craig Gibson, who earned his 450th win with the program Wednesday. “They’re always offensive, so it will be a good three-game series for us.”
The Bears are 19-4 and have won six straight games. They are batting .317 as a team with a 4.46 ERA.
Danny Edgeworth leads the offense with a .413 average, and five other Bears are batting better than .300: JT Thomas (.370), Charlie Madden (.361), Alex Hanson (.313), Jackson Ware (.308) and Hunter Bening (.306). Madden has nine home runs, while Thomas has seven, and Bening has six.
Four Mercer players have at least 20 RBI: Thomas (29), Madden (28), Edgeworth (26) and Bening (20).
“I think we’re playing well. We’re defending well. That was our thing all along, trying to define some roles,” Gibson said. “I think we’re getting the pinch-hitter off the bench, the best pinch-runner, those kinds of things. Our matchups are good out of the bullpen. So this is what it’s all about. This is our second season.”
The Bears won the Southern Conference regular-season title for the second straight year last year. Mercer won the conference tournament title in 2015 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament but lost in the conference tournament championship round last year.
East Tennessee State is 11-7 with a .328 average and a 4.46 ERA.
“ETSU is really great club. They can really swing it, and they’ve been pitching the ball really well,” Mercer senior pitcher Ryan Askew said. “It will be a really good first matchup to go ahead and get ready for SoCon. We had a really good non-conference. Ultimately, that means nothing if we don’t come out and start playing well in the SoCon. We want to try to get back to that tournament as the one seed again and try to win it all.”
This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Mercer carries momentum into ‘second season’."