When Ryan Mau left his job as the recruiting coordinator and pitching/catching coach at the U.S. Naval Academy for the head coaching job at Longwood, he had talent on the roster. But it was talent that wasn’t used to winning at the collegiate level.
Mau got his career started at Charleston Southern as the pitching coach in 2003 and has made stops at Marist College and VMI, so he knew all the Big South had to offer coming into his current position.
In only his second year at the helm, Mau has already started to make his stamp on the program. In that amount of time, he has been able to bring in eight transfers as well as five freshmen last season and five again this year, bringing his recruitment total to 18 players brought in over two years.
Most of the transfer players have made a significant impact on the program the last two seasons, including senior first baseman Connar Bastaich. In his time with the program, Bastaich has hit .320 while hitting two home runs, driving in 47 runs and scoring 63 times.
Junior outfielder Drew Kitson may not have the best numbers on the team, but he has been a mainstay in the Lancer batting lineup, hitting primarily sixth or seventh. Kitson is only hitting .205, but he has had a few clutch hits, including a 2-run single against Wagner to give the Lancers their first win of the season.
Let’s not also forget the fact that in Mau’s first season at Longwood, the pitching staff led the Big South in strikeouts and the team stole 86 bases, the most in the program’s Division I history.
Now granted, when you have an all-time great player in Aaron Myers taking the mound once a week, your staff is going to rack up on the strikeout total. Last season, Myers led the Big South with 115, but the staff overall had 440, almost 100 more than their previous record of 344.
With that said, the pitching staff has been on the same level this year with senior captain Travis Burnette leading the way with a 6-1 record, 2.55 ERA, 59 strikeouts and only 26 walks in 67 innings of work. The 194 free passes that the entire staff has allowed is a little high, but that can also correlate to the number of innings that first year players – freshmen and junior college transfers – have thrown so far in 2016.
Case in point, junior transfer Tyler Wirsu has 24 walks, nine hit batters and eight wild pitches in just 26.2 innings of work, as well as a 6.41 ERA over ten appearances.
At this point of the season, the team has a 23-18 record with a 4.42 ERA, going 18-7 at home whereas the team was 19-23 at this point last season.
The biggest improvement this program has seen is the never-say-die attitude, especially in 2016. This season alone, the Lancers are 10-3 in games decided by one run, 4-1 in extra-inning games, have five walk-off wins and are 6-3 against opponents from the Commonwealth, including a series win over the defending Big South champion Radford Highlanders.
The Lancers’ three most recent comeback efforts have demonstrated that never-say-die attitude in perfect fashion. The first came on April 16 against Savannah State, when Longwood was trailing after seven innings but came back to win in 10 innings. The second came the following day, when an eighth inning rally gave them a sweep over the Tigers.
The most recent comeback happened on April 23, when Longwood rallied from a four-run deficit in the sixth to beat Campbell 8-4.
The only thing that has kept the Lancers back this season so far is the depth and consistency of their pitching rotation. Burnette and freshman left-hander Steven Farkas (2-1, 3.29 ERA) have been the most consistent guys in the rotation. But Sunday's starter, junior Luke Simpson, and the guys that get the nod in the midweek matchups haven’t been very consistent at all.
Of all of the arms that have gotten time on Sundays or midweek games, Simpson has been the only one to record a quality start when he pitched 8 innings against Hofstra back on March 13.
Once Mau can get more pitching depth and consistency from his rotation, the Lancers should be a team that is consistently in the top-half of the Big South on an annual basis, especially if he keeps the never-quit attitude instilled on this program.
Derrick Bennington is a senior sportswriter for The Rotunda, who has been covering the Longwood baseball team all semester.
