The start of the 2013 Men’s Centurion baseball season at Bucks was highly anticipated, but the end result left the team’s aspirations unfulfilled as they sputtered to a 4-14 overall record and missed the playoffs for the second straight year.

“Nothing went wrong,” head coach Jeff Cochran said. “We were an inexperienced club with only four returning players and the new guys were young. It was an improvement over last year record wise, but overall the players were in a lot of close games where we just lost due to lack of pitching.”

The pitching was definitely the main problem for the team as they too often would find themselves in holes they could not climb out of. During their 18 scheduled games the team allowed double digit scores eight times leading to their 2-8 conference record.

Inexperience and injury affected the rotation with Tyler Mager hurt and Andrew Check pitching in his first season. Robert Hayes would have trouble getting out of the early innings unscathed.

However, there were some bright spots on the roster as Matthew Creevey was solid in relief and ace pitcher Patrick O’Leary tossed three complete games. O’Leary’s stuff is good enough to give him a shot at the majors one day, Cochrane said.

The offense had its moments, but also had trouble scoring runs for long stretches. The game of the year came on April 6 when the Centurions rallied from nine runs down in the second inning to win 16-14 against Union community college.

The offense struggled out of the gate, scoring only seven runs in their first three games. Another late season slump saw the team push across a measly nine runs during one four game stretch.

“We did not hit well at all,” Cochran said. “(We had) too many strikeouts and our production was not good enough to win.”

Coming down the stretch centerfielder Andrew Check heated up by hitting .576 in the last five games. Check will be spending part of the summer in the American Legion which should bode well for next year’s team.

The part of the schedule that hurt the Centurions the most was a seven-game losing streak with most of the games coming on the road.

“It bothered all of us, but the guys never quit,” Cochran said. “It was tough to watch but the team tried. We just did not get the brakes we needed, but we did not make our brakes either.”

Cochran blamed most of the team’s struggles on himself, but said he enjoyed working with a lot of great men on his Centurion ball club. Whether or not Cochran returns for 2014 is still cloudy, but rarely are championship teams built overnight.

Third baseman Leo Hernandez summed up the team’s lackluster performance.

“It did not go like we imagined,” Hernandez said. “I know personally my goal was to make the playoffs and obviously that did not happen.”