Junior Brandon Buday had 5 RBI in the sweep of Brandeis. (Jasmine Li | Student Life)

Playing away from Washington University presents a unique challenge for the student-athletes of the WashU Bears baseball team. Students miss classes, traveling is exhausting, and there are few — if any — Bears fans present to cheer the team on to victory. While home-field advantage is one of the most basic principles of sporting superstition, the Bears buck the trend. Aside from a one-run loss in a mid-March tilt against Rhodes College, WashU has been a perfect 8-0 away from Kelly Field. 

Baseball embraced their “road warrior” mentality this past weekend and swept a crucial four-game series against the last-place Brandeis University Judges from April 19-21. The sweep comes at a critical time of the season and bolsters WashU’s tournament resume with one weekend remaining in the regular season. The Bears move to a 23-12-1 record, setting up a critical matchup with No. 15 Case Western Reserve University from April 26-28 that will decide the University Athletic Association (UAA) conference championship.

WashU received much-needed support from its pitching staff in the weekend series. Throughout the season, poor pitching has been the Achilles heel of an otherwise dominant Bears squad. So far in 2024 — even after a weekend where WashU was able to keep the Brandeis Bats relatively quiet — the Bears’ pitchers have a staff-earned run average of 6.09, which is the third-best mark in the five-team UAA.To make matters worse, the Bears were coming off of a series against Emory University where the pitching staff allowed a total of 48 runs to score in four losses. Against Brandeis, WashU allowed just 11 runs across their four victories. On Friday, junior Sebastian Guzman tossed eight innings of one-run ball, allowing Brandeis’ hitters just three hits, and striking out seven Judges. 

Sebastian Guzman pitches in an early-season home game. (Ella Giere | Student Life)

In the fourth inning of Friday’s game, senior infielder Jack Miller broke the scoreless tie with an RBI groundout. The next inning, senior Harry Mauterer broke the game open with a two-run double, before scoring on a single by senior Clayton Miller in the very next at-bat. Brandeis scored in the bottom of the fifth, but Guzman held the Judges to just that run. Junior Brandon Buday stole home in the ninth to make it 5-1 for WashU, and junior Hank Weiss pitched a scoreless inning to close out a win for the Bears. WashU’s victory on Friday was their first win against a UAA opponent since March 30. 

In the first half of a Saturday doubleheader, the Bears’ potent lineup was on display with an offensive breakout performance. In the first inning, first-year pitcher Anderson Gomez allowed a solo home run, but Buday tied the game with an RBI double in the top of the second. Gomez held the Judges to five more hits in the contest, and the Bears gave their pitcher the run support he deserved in the later innings. With two outs in the fifth, graduate student Evan Minarovic singled home Miller, and fellow graduate student Sam Polk brought Minarovic home in the next at-bat. After junior Justin Zachery singled, sophomore Connor Lindsey crushed his first collegiate home run — a three-run shot to break the game open. A four-run rally in the eighth inning, highlighted by an RBI double by first-year Anthony Equale, brought the game to an abrupt mercy-ruled 13-1 ending. 

In the nightcap, junior pitchers Will Henkel and Weiss kept Brandeis to just six hits. The Bears took advantage of Brandeis’ errors, scoring many of their runs on wild pitches and errant plays. In the fifth inning, first-year outfielder Carson Cleage hit his third home run of the season to give the Bears a 4-1 lead, and they would hold on for an 8-3 victory.

On Sunday, after taking an early 2-0 lead, WashU allowed a six-run Brandeis rally in the bottom of the sixth inning. Despite scoring the two early runs, the Bears had no answer to Brandeis’ pitcher, senior Sean Decker-Jacoby. Decker-Jacoby struck out 13 Bears in his eight innings of work, but was pulled after throwing 125 pitches and allowing another WashU run to score. In the ninth, the Brandeis relievers walked three of the first four WashU batters to load the bases. Sophomore Shane Pellegrino then doubled, scoring two runs to make it a 6-5 Brandeis lead. The Judges walked Mauterer, and Miller doubled in the next at-bat, scoring Equale and Pellegrino to give WashU the 7-6 lead. Buday capped off the thrilling ninth inning with a two-RBI single. Miller also threw 3.2 innings of scoreless relief on just 21 pitches, clinching the series sweep for WashU.

The Bears will face Case Western next weekend in an all-important final series of the conference season. Considering WashU’s NCAA Tournament resume — series wins against the University of Chicago and New York University, but losses against No. 13 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Emory University — it is likely that WashU will have to win the series, and the conference, to make the tournament. The Bears, at 7-4-1, are well off the Spartans’ 10-2 record, so they will need a series sweep to earn a conference championship.