Baseball ends season with SUNYAC losses

Plattsburgh State baseball head coach Kris Doorey came to work Monday without a SUNYAC trophy. And there were no plans for the next game, which would have been an NCAA tournament game.

Instead it was the usual end-of-the-season business.

“It’s always exciting. Monday morning when we came to work, coach (Mike) Bergmann and I started working on what are we doing next year?” Doorey said. “You work on bringing recruits in all year round, and once the season’s over, you start to piece the roster together about where you want guys to go, what we’re still missing”

That work started when the Cardinals (22-17, 9-9 SUNYAC) dropped their pair of SUNYAC tournament games in Cortland

last weekend to Cortland and Oneonta. PSUC entered the weekend having beaten both squads once during the regular season, but it could not put together the offensive showing it had in its last 10 games.

Losing its ace for the Cortland game didn’t help either.

Starting pitcher Tyler Greene was set to throw against the Red Dragons for the first time since a 2-0 victory in late March, but an errant throw in warm-ups hit him in the head and left him with concussion-like symptoms. Kyle Kelly took the ball instead and was tagged for six runs (four earned) in three innings pitched en route to taking the loss.

It was Kelly’s first career appearance against Cortland. He said it didn’t matter that he was facing Cortland, but it did matter that he was mentally prepared to throw against Oneonta, making it tough to pitch on short notice.

“I don’t want to take anything away from what he did because he put together a great season, but this was his biggest challenge by far,” Greene said. “So for him to have to take it on shorter notice than what’s normally given, it was probably more of a challenge than what he was ready for.”

Greene was able to pitch the next day against Oneonta and held the Red Dragons to one run through 7 1-3 innings of work before being charged with another three runs and the loss after Brian Burns took the ball.

“We all went into that game expecting to win, and we should have won,” Greene said. “Overall, it’s a huge letdown and big disappointment. We didn’t put a full game together. We played parts of each game.”

The losses marked the final games for eight Cards, including four position starters and two starting pitchers. Pat Shaughnessy, Kris Cauchon, Jon Handy, Damian Tyler, Greg Larnerd, Greene, Bobby Piser and Dan Tracy will not return next season.

But PSUC is set to return 24 players from this year’s roster, including starters Pedro Gonzalez, Mike Mulvihill, Mike Vargues and Chris Pescetti, as well as Brian Latulipe, who appeared in 20 games and was used as a pinch-hitter toward season’s end. Greene said the roster reminds him of his freshman year in 2009 when the Cards had a freshman-heavy lineup. He said he tried to give as much knowledge as he could to the team this year, in hopes it will progress similarly to the way his class did.

Pescetti, who started 26 games (a majority at first base) and hit .278 with 14 RBI, is among the players Doorey will look forward to return as a starter.