Vermont is 6-4 at home and has won five straight in the spacious confines of Recreation Field. They’re hitting .282 as a team and scoring more then six runs per game, all considerably better marks then on the road. They’re hitting just .223, almost 60 points lower, while posting a 1-10 record away from Montpelier.
No player better exemplifies this case then potential All Star Mikael Mogues, the team's popular first basemen. Mogues is hitting .500 (17-for-34) at home, compared to just .233 (10-for-43) on the road. These dramatic splits are visible throughout the team -- Troy Scocca at .419/.171 and Trevor Ezell at .412/.077, albeit small sample size.
Even the pitching flourishes at home, with a 2.90 ERA compared to a 4.55 mark. Opponents are also hitting 60 points worse in pitchers park that is Recreation Field, so it's a built-in advantage that Vermont's thrived on.
For that reason, a five-game stretch of games in front of a routinely-packed home crowd could be huge for momentum. The Mountaineers, at 7-14, are two games back of Upper Valley and just 5 1/2 out of first place. The Northern Division is crowded, per usual, and Vermont can gain some valuable ground.
They’ll take on third-place Valley tonight, who enters on a three-game losing streak. That’s followed by three more divisional games, including meetings with fourth-place Winnipesaukee (12-11), division-leading Keene (13-9), and Sanford (11-12). The stretch ends with a Southern Division foe in Mystic (14-10), who’ve won four straight and are heating up.
Tonight’s foe has dropped six of their last 10, but Valley have some of the best pitching in the NECBL, led by a trio of capable starters. Mark Washington, Trent Astle, and Aaron Leasher have combined to make 12 starts totaling 64 innings, posting an impressive 1.97 ERA. Vermont will deal with Astle, a southpaw who’s turned in back-to-back quality starts and held the Mountaineers to three runs on five hits over 5 1/3 back on June 17th.
The Mountaineers have had good pitching and timely hitting at home recently, so these games can definitely make a huge impact on the season. Best case scenario is Vermont obviously sweeping the five-game set, and that would put them at 12-14 on the season, a far cry from their shaky 2-11 start. They’ve gone 5-5 over their last 10 games -- and all five losses have been on the road. Every win is valuable at this point in the season, with a little over half of the season remaining.
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