Ninth-straight loss for Mason baseball comes in 16-1 drubbing by Maryland

Duncan Satherlie (left) swings on a pitch from Maryland pitcher Jake Stinnet (Photo by Walter Martinez).

At the end of the seventh inning, a few crows perched themselves atop the scoreboard at Spuhler Field. It was as if they were waiting to pick away at the beaten and battered George Mason Patriots after the Maryland Terrapins put on a small-ball clinic en route to a 16-1 win.

The Terps sacrificed runners over and drove them in with singles or sacrifice flies. Through the first seven innings of Wednesday’s matinee, Maryland (18-15, 4-11) had four two-run innings and led Mason (12-21, 4-11), 8-0.

Then in the eighth, the Terrapins’ bats exploded for an eight-run inning, extending their lead to 16-0.

Not even the crows had the patience to wait until the end — there may not have been much left anyway.

Mason mustered seven hits on the afternoon. Junior catcher Tucker Tobin hit his eighth home run of the season in the ninth — the only run for the Patriots in the 16-1 drubbing.

For the third straight game the Patriots were held to a single run.

“You’ve just got to stay on it,” Mason coach Bill Brown said. “I’ve always said offense comes and goes. I honestly do not worry about offense that much.”

The loss extended Mason’s losing streak to nine straight games, the longest such streak of the season. And the program’s longest losing streak since 2010, when the Patriots lost 10 straight games.

Junior third baseman Blaise Fernandez was the only Patriot with a multi-hit game.

“Everything you go through is a learning experience,” said Fernandez, who was 2-4 with two singles. “With everything being a learning experience, it’s all about perseverance. It’s really easy to crumble in situations like this. You just have to keep a high head and keep pushing through.”

The 15-run deficit matched the largest in a loss this season — Mason fell to the University of Delaware by the same score Sunday.

“In this stretch of games, people must be fielding .990 against us,” Brown said. “As poorly as we’ve played, we are also getting zero breaks.”

Mason’s last win was in College Park, Md. against the Terps on March 26, one day after the announcement of Mason’s move from the Colonial Athletic Association to the Atlantic-10 conference.

“It’s been a challenging couple weeks and I haven’t done a good job communicating to the team how we need to handle this season,” Brown said. “Learning a few weeks ago that there was no postseason play, I haven’t done a very good job in communicating to them how we need to keep doing things.”

Including junior starting pitcher Michael Bowie, who pitched four innings allowing four runs on four hits while walking three, Mason used seven pitchers to finish the non-conference game.

But Coach Brown does not believe that will affect the pitching this weekend against the University of Towson.

“That won’t have any impact at all,” Brown said. “I was disappointed in the back end that we gave up that big number. We tried to put people on the mound in situations to get them success and it didn’t happen.”

The Patriots will play host to Towson this weekend. The first game of the series is a 3 p.m. start on Friday.

“I tell you what, as soon as we find rock bottom, there’s only one place to go from there,” Fernandez said.