Stiffler gets 23, Bobcats get a loss
By Britton Dove, Staff Writer
April 11, 2008 | 6 a.m.
The bad news for the Ohio University baseball team is that it lost a nonconference game to the Xavier Musketeers 8-5 on Tuesday night. The good news is senior Matt Stiffler extended his hitting streak to 23 games.
Stiffler led off for the Bobcats with a solo home run (his sixth of the year) on the second pitch in the bottom of the first inning to extend the streak. He has doubled his career home-run total this year already with 12. Stiffler also singled up the middle, hit into a fielder’s choice and struck out twice in a losing effort, dropping Ohio to 15-13 overall (7-2 Mid-American Conference).
Stiffler’s last significant hitting streak ended at 18 games, and game after game he continues to demolish it, but Stiffler remains modest about the accomplishment and is just focused on winning games.
“You get in streaks, and I’m on a hot one,” Stiffler said. “I’m just seeing the ball well and hitting it."
Stiffler leads the team in most of the batting categories this year including batting average (.366), slugging percentage (.626), runs scored (34), hits (45), runs batted in (25), triples (4), home runs (6) and total bases (77). Stiffler is also near the top of many categories in the MAC as well as seventh in batting average.
Stiffler’s teammate, junior pitcher Zach Elmer (recently named MAC Player of the Week, with Stiffler, with a conference-leading 2.06 ERA), knows how hard it can be to pitch to Stiffler after throwing against him in fall-league baseball, but he has his own strategies to get him out when he pitches to him.
“I get pretty lucky when I throw against him out in the fall,” Elmer said. “I try to stick away from throwing him fastballs. If I were to pitch against him, I would throw him a slider. You can’t miss with Stiffler, or he will hit the ball out of the park.”
It is a good feeling to Elmer to have a guy like Stiffler whom he can rely on to generate some offense for the team and score a few runs early when he is pitching.
“When Stiffler gets up in the box, we all know he is going to get a hit,” Elmer said. “He is a good hitter, and he’s been a good hitter for the past few years. He is seeing the ball well, and he is doing well for us so far this year.”
Although the hitting streak continues, and Stiffler contributed to four of the Bobcats’ five runs on Tuesday, coach Joe Carbone would have rather seen a win on the scoreboard. According to the coach, the loss came down to not playing as well in the last few innings as they did in the first few.
“You have to play nine innings of baseball,” Carbone said. "We didn’t pitch well. We had the ball up, and we have been preaching, preaching, preaching to keep the ball down because if you do keep the ball down, you get ground balls instead of home runs."
---