The Tartan Pride have not lost a game since March 14 and are currently riding on a nine-game winning streak. A combination of solid pitching and hitting has been the main reason for their success so far this season.
Outside of a few close games, the Pride seem to be handling their opponents with ease. Of their 16 wins so far, in 10 of them they outscored their opponents by five or more runs. Also, out of the 19 games they have played this season, in 14 of them they have allowed five or fewer runs behind a dominant pitching staff.
Before the season began, coach Steve Dintaman had said that sometimes finding good competition is hard because they can only play a handful of schools, being that we are a community college. As well as they are playing, Dintaman says the level of competition is not a concern so far.
“We’ve played some of the better teams in the region so I’m not too concerned about that. Sometimes the midweek games later in the season aren’t as strong. But all the teams we have played so far have been in our region. So I think we have just played very well. We played some clean baseball for the most part.”
If that holds true, then the team should have a lot of confidence as they go along and open up their conference play this week against Owens Community College, a 6-4 team near Toledo. When Dintaman was asked about a team that they were looking forward to playing, he explained how Owens used to be an intense rivalry.
“We used to be really big rivals with Owens. We had players that left here and transferred there that wanted to prove me wrong. They’ve also recruited guys from our area that we maybe didn’t recruit. There was just a lot of stuff going on with Owens. The rivalry has kind of died down a bit, but every conference game is a rivalry. They are intense games, they are conference games. Everyone brings energy to those games and everyone is ready to play. They know they are playing for a championship every time they take the field,” says Dintaman.
With how well the team has been playing, it makes sense that you wouldn’t want to fix something that isn’t broken. There are plenty of hard working players on the team and with how strong the starting lineup has been so far, it is hard to squeeze everyone into the lineup.
One of the most improved players coming off their freshman year is Jimmy White, an outfielder out of Elder High School in Cincinnati. White is currently second in average with .370, home runs with five, and RBIs with 19.
“Jimmy White is the most improved player on our team right now. He is a guy we recruited out of high school. He has a lot of tools, he’s strong, he hits for a little bit of power and he can run. There were too many outfielders last year. There were too many guys ahead of him, but he competed. Even this fall he started out a little rough, but he started to figure things out in the winter. He won a job and hit a home run his first game.” Dintaman said.
Coming up in the next week, Sinclair takes on conference rival Owens in a four game series March 27 and 28, two games against Vincennes University, Wittenburg University, conference rival Cuyahoga, and Wright State University as they try to keep their winning streak alive.
Matt Summers
Reporter