The top sport at Eastern the past two years, arguably, has been baseball.

The Panthers won the 2008 Ohio Valley Conference Tournament Title and played in the NCAA Tournament.

Last season, Eastern won the OVC regular season title.

This season, however, the team has gotten off to a sluggish start, going 3-14 with poor fielding, hitting and bullpen pitching.

“It’s been the case of this game, we don’t play good defense,” Schmitz said. “Then the next game, we don’t play good defense. The next game, we don’t hit.

“As I told them after the Ohio State loss (Friday), we have to get better in all areas. There’s not one area where we could sit there and go ‘Wow, we’re pretty good.’ We have to get better in all areas or we will continue to struggle.”

Part of the problem is the fielding overhaul, with seven players starting in new positions.

“We’ve got essentially seven new position players on the field, so that’s different,” Schmitz said. “They’ve played the game of baseball before. They know how to play the game. They haven’t played together, and that’s a key thing.”

Another woeful area, Schmitz points to his players pressing. Players like sophomore third baseman Zach Borenstein are trying to fill the void left from last year’s graduating class. Schmitz said they are pressing and swinging for the fences and not for hits.

With graduates like Brett Nommensen, Jordan Tokarz and Jordan Kreke leaving, sophomore left fielder Ben Thoma said the lineup is not as strong as last year.

“Last year, No. 1 through 9, we were strong,” Thoma said. “Everyone was solid and could pick each other up.

“This year, it seems if one guy gets a hit, we can keep it on for a couple innings, but last year we could keep it up for all nine innings.”

The bullpen is not helping matters either.

Pitching coach Skylar Meade said they are not closing out games well, putting guys away and minimizing big run innings.

“We can pitch well the first seven or eight innings and have one bad inning to wreck the effort,” Meade said. “That skews our pitching performance.”

Junior closer Matt Miller is in his first year closing due to an injury to senior first baseman/pitcher Richie Derbak, who finished games the last three years.

Miller is 0-4, has a 4.30 ERA and one save but Schmitz said he is improving.

“You are putting guys in stressful situations and you are teaching them how to get through that but it’s a process,” Schmitz said.

“Being patient with the whole thing is kind of hard but Matt has shown some good signs. We need to find guys in the seventh and eighth innings to bridge the game to him.”

To complicate matters, junior pitcher Josh Mueller is injured and has post-throwing soreness in his right arm, missed two starts and will likely sit this weekend.

Meade said he does not know how long Mueller will be out.

“He’s so important to us, so we’ve held him out,” Meade said of Mueller. “What it is, guys got to pick it up.”

Despite all these problems, Schmitz said the Panthers need to improve and focus on themselves,

“There is no focus on Chicago State or Southern Illinois Carbondale, only on Eastern,” he said.

Bob Bajek can be reached at 581-7944 or [email protected].