An in-season look at UD baseball: How far can their ‘big run machines’ take them?
(Photo via @daytonflyersbaseball Instagram)
Peter Bonasso | Contributing Writer
The University of Dayton baseball team may not be a perennial powerhouse, but they certainly have some power this year.
UD enters a three-game series against George Washington ranked fifth in the nation in hits and 34th in batting average. Sophomore infielder/outfielder Michael DiMartini leads the nation in hits (63) and freshman infielder Rylan Lujo ranks fifth(60), with the two sporting 28-game and 17-game hitting streaks, respectively. The two also join junior infielder Dyrenson Wouters in the nation’s top 30 players in batting average, making Dayton the only team with more than one player in that range (save for Butler, who has two players tied for 30th). So, how have those numbers translated into on-the-diamond success?
Well, it’s complicated. Dayton is 17-18 on the season and 7-5 in A-10 play, putting them in a tie for fourth in the conference. They’ve done most of their damage in the past 10 games, posting a 7-3 record and taking series wins against Davidson and UMass, the latter of which was a three-game sweep. Dayton’s average of 10.1 runs per game in that stretch is key, as the Flyers are 17-3 this season when scoring six or more runs. What has kept the Flyers in the middle of the A-10 pack, then, is being 0-15 in every other game.
Granted, as head coach Scott Loiseau noted in a Zoom interview, you can’t expect to win many games scoring five runs or less the way Division I baseball is being played right now. However, with this Dayton team, there’s a clear disparity between the offense and the pitching staff.
The Flyers have a team ERA of 8.08, which ranks 257th out of 299 Division I teams. There is one standout pitcher in junior J.J. Gatti, who sports a 4.50 ERA and has held opponents to two earned runs over his past 18.4 innings. Gatti’s resurgence is all the more impressive considering he missed his entire sophomore season due to injury, and he earned A-10 Pitcher of the Week honors on March 31 for his performance against Davidson. As for the rest of his staff, Loiseau said that improvement will come with guys getting more reps at the college level.
“There’s a lot of challenges for our new pitchers, who were used to just focusing on the pitching,” Loiseau said. “The speed of the game is different in college, and now you need to contain the running game, have a good pickoff move and there’s just a lot more to pay attention to. Early on, those guys were just trying to survive, but with more experience the comfort level becomes much higher.”
Looking at the makeup of this Dayton team, it’s easy to see the newness that Loiseau is referring to. 10 of the team’s 22 rostered pitchers are freshmen, and six of them have pitched double-digit innings this season. While it may have taken some steep learning curves, though, the freshman pitchers are starting to help the team in high-pressure moments. Ben Dean pitched 2.1 scoreless innings and four strikeouts on Sunday to secure UD’s 9-8 win over UMass, and Carson Samuels threw two scoreless innings with two strikeouts in UD’s 6-4 win against Akron. If this increased quality of play trickles down the pitching staff, Dayton will have a real case to win the A-10.
Heading into the 2024-2025 season, the Flyers were picked by the league’s coaches to finish sixth in the A-10 following a 33-22 season where they finished in third place. The biggest impact on the team’s outlook came with the additions of their three main offensive weapons—Lujo being recruited out of high school, Wouters transferring from Southern New Hampshire and DiMartini coming in from Penn State.
With DiMartini also came Loiseau, who was announced as Dayton’s head coach two weeks after former head coach Jayson King left Dayton to coach at Vanderbilt. Oddly enough, Loiseau had played under King at Franklin Pierce University, which was immensely helpful for him in getting adjusted to the climate at Dayton. Loiseau was able to speak on King as well as his own expectations heading into his new job.
“My old coach in college was my predecessor at UD, and he’s helped me a lot knowing what the culture’s like here and the leadership,” Loiseau said. “At Penn State, it was like I was in a silo, I just didn’t get to interact with anyone. Then I come here and I’m meeting everybody, saying ‘hi’ in the hallway, and I really appreciate that…I wasn’t sure what to expect, everything’s a learning curve and I’m just learning what the A-10 is like.”
In about a month, Loiseau will be adding the A-10 Baseball Championship to his collection of learning. After a three-game set against George Washington this weekend, the Flyers will have five more series against A-10 competition before the championship starts on May 20. With a mere three-game difference between first and eighth place, the crown seems to be for the taking. What does Loiseau see as the team’s best path to success?
“We just need to stay the course, keep playing a lot of players with minimal experience, and really it just takes a while for them to get to know each other,” Loiseau said.
“We gotta focus on playing good defense, throwing strikes, and being competitive in the box. The goal is to be playing our best baseball in the end and not in the beginning.”
Please be aware that this story was written and filed Friday morning, before the three-game series vs. GW. The Flyers won all three games.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter Bonasso, a senior, produced this blog post as an assignment for Sports Writing (CMM 334), offered through the Department of Communication. In this class, students develop writing skills for journalism across media platforms, with a focus on clarity, accuracy, research, effective interviewing and writing on deadline. Flyer News publishes work like this, which gives students the opportunity to report on real stories while also building strong writing samples for potential employers.