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Andrew Wellman

The Wittenberg baseball team has new life, thanks to a seven-game win streak that included a four-game sweep of North Coast Athletic Conference West Division rival Earlham last weekend. The Tigers are now 20-13 overall and 8-4 in the NCAC West heading into this weekends key four-game showdown with division-leading Denison in Granville, Ohio.

The Tigers had won three in a row before slumping to three straight losses against Thomas More April 9-10. The rollercoaster ride left the Tigers at 13-13 overall and 4-4 in the NCAC West with the clock ticking on the 2005 season.

Next came a 12-3 win over neighborhood rival Cedarville on April 11 and the game that may have turned things around, an 8-7 come-from-behind victory against Ohio Athletic Conference powerhouse Otterbein on April 13. Just two weeks earlier, the Cardinals had thumped Wittenberg 14-2 on their home field in Westerville, Ohio.

In those two games, sophomore Andrew Wellman (Huntington, W.Va./Huntington) emerged as an offensive force after playing sparingly through the first month of the season. Against the Cardinals, Wellman went 4-for-5 with four runs batted in, a stat line he has become familiar with.

During the seven-game win streak, Wellman is batting an incredible 17-of-24 with 13 RBI and 10 runs scored. His performance was enough for the NCAC to recognize him as Player of the Week on April 18.

Most recently, Wellman was again in the middle of things. After the four-game sweep of Earlham, in which the Tigers outscored their visitors 38-11, Wellman again collected four hits in five at-bats, drove in two runs and scored three more, including the game-tying run in the top of the ninth inning, as Wittenberg upended Muskingum 10-9 in 10 innings on April 19.

While Wellman has been the offensive spark, the teams pitching has increasingly relied upon the right arms of the Hartfelder brothers. Senior Kurt Hartfelder (Columbus, Ohio/Upper Arlington) is working his way toward several school records as he has pitched a complete game in all seven of his starts in the 2005 season. He is 6-1, including wins in the first game of the last four four-game weekend series, and his 3.91 earned run average and 46 innings pitched both lead the Tigers.

Freshman Eric Hartfelder (Columbus, Ohio/Upper Arlington) has emerged as perhaps the teams most dependable reliever, an important commodity for a team struggling to find pitching depth in the midst of a title chase. Eric Hartfelder is 1-0 with a 4.35 ERA in four appearances, three of which have come in the seven-game win streak.

The play of junior Justin McCulla (St. Paris, Ohio/Graham), who is having the best season of his collegiate career, has also been noteworthy. In 29 starts in the field, McCulla is batting .304 with a team-best five triples and six stolen bases in seven attempts. On the mount, he is 2-0 with a 4.20 ERA in four appearances.

After Wellman, who is on a record-breaking pace in terms of batting averag (.578), three other Tigers are batting above .380 with extensive numbers of plate appearances. Junior Brad Koopman (Pleasant Hill, Ohio/Newton) has appeared in 21 games, with 20 starts, primarily as the teams catcher, and he is hitting .421 with two home runs and 12 RBI. Senior Jon Komperda (Bay Village, Ohio/Bay), coming off a team-best .441 batting average in 2004, ranks among the team leaders in numerous offensive categories, including batting average (.385). And freshman Jon Fox (Urbana, Ohio/Urbana), until he was sidelined with an injury recently, had done a bang-up job in the leadoff spot of the batting order. He is hitting .398 with a team-best 29 runs scored.