Let the playoffs begin! The regular season is over and the post season has started for Biola’s baseball team. Biola finished with a 33-18 regular season record and a 25-11 GSAC record. They finished in second place in the division just behind Cal Baptist University. The Eagles actually had a chance to move into first place and share the GSAC title with the Lacers if they had won their last game against Masters College, but they lost 3-2 in extra innings.
Representing in GSAC
They missed winning the conference by one game, but four of their players were selected for the All-GSAC baseball team by the coaches around the conference. The four players chosen were senior Brian Loard, junior Cameron McVey, junior Vinnie Faryard and junior Drake Fages. As if Fages batting statistics aren’t impressive enough, he was also the Gold Glove winner.
Fages committed only seven errors out of 202 fielding opportunities which gave him an astounding .968 fielding percentage at third-base this year. He also led Biola in almost every single offensive category. He led the team with 17 home runs and 69 RBIs and had a batting average of .358 along with a slugging percentage of .720.
Brian Loard had an excellent senior season as he hit .311 on the year and had the second highest slugging percentage on the team at .629. Over half of his hits went for extra bases this year and he had the second highest on base percentage for the team as well at .436.
Junior Cameron McVey made a name for himself as one of the top closers in the conference this year. McVey recorded 12 saves, which was 5-th most in the conference, along with a 2.17 ERA. He also had 38 strike outs and held opposing batters to an average of just .173.
The final player chosen for the All-GSAC team was junior Vinnie Faryard. Faryard not only had impressive stats like .345 batting average, 32 runs scored and 18 RBIs, but he also led the team with 31 consecutive games of getting on base. He also had the longest hitting streak of 18 games, and recorded 21 multi-hit games.
Focusing on post season tournaments
Each of these players were extremely deserving of being chosen for the All-GSAC team and should be proud of how they played this regular season. However, the regular season is behind them now, and the team’s current goal is to win the conference tournament title.
Sophomore pitcher Nick Turner said, “We feel good about our season but now its playoff time and that is all we are focused on.”
Biola won their first game of the tournament against Point Loma Nazarene 5-3, and surprisingly they were the only team in the top three to win their first matchup. Both first seed Cal Baptist and third seed Fresno Pacific lost on Tuesday and were pushed to the consolation bracket.
This tournament is double elimination so neither of those teams are out, but Biola is looking good so far. The winner of this tournament gets an automatic berth to the NAIA Tournament during the second week of May. Biola should be in good shape either way since they are currently ranked 12th in the last NAIA National Poll, but the Eagles want to grab that second qualifying spot by winning this tournament.
Biola’s next game is Wednesday May 4th against Concordia University. Nick Turner is expected to start that game, and the Eagles plan to do all they can to move one step closer to that GSAC Tournament Title.
