The men’s baseball team has had its ups and downs this season, but has worked on their errors to advance further into the playoffs this year, according to head coach Stephen Stanicek. Many of the Titan’s losses were closely contested according to Stanicek. Currently the team is 12-14.

“We just haven’t had that big hit in that moment,” Stanicek said. “We have been trying to focus a lot on relaxing in those pressure moments and just trying to do a better job of getting it done when it has to get done.”

According to Brandon Matias, sophomore and third baseman, the coaches observed that the team is having trouble with generating confidence during high pressure points during a game and, as a result, are losing games that they could have won.

“[Stanicek] wants us to generate confidence within ourselves while also working on the things that we need to work on, especially defensively,” Matias said. “We have a lot of errors […], we need to work on making routine plays and keeping those routine plays routine for us. Offensively, I don’t think […] we have struggled much because almost all of our games we’ve out hit the other team, but we still lose those games.”

The Titans need to strengthen their defense, make more productive outs and continue working on hits and gaining confidence throughout a game, according to Alan Chin senior leader and pitcher.

“I feel once we put all the strings together that [correct errors …] it will come together nicely,” Chin said.

Chin also noted that the men are working extremely hard and are determined to fix mistakes to potentially beat some teams that have usually been major competition for the team such as New Trier, Evanston, and Deerfield.

“I want to beat Deerfield because when we were sophomores, we had a little bench clearing fight with them, so […] I would really like to come back as a senior and take these guys out,” Chin said.

This year, the team has created a bit of a rivalry with Evanston due to the fact that the two games played were close and high pressure situations, according to Matias.

“We definitely created some sort of tension with Evanston, they swept us,” Matias said. “But both games were very well fought and we shouldn’t have gone 0-2 against Evanston. If we ever play them again, we will definitely be playing with a chip on our shoulder.”

According to Stanicek, Chin and Matias, the team believes that fixing day to day errors and creating confidence during high pressure points during a game will result in more wins. It will also potentially help the team make it farther in the playoffs than in previous years.

“For the entire team, [the goal] is definitely to go farther in the playoffs then we did last year,” Matias said. “If we can make the changes that we need to right now and keep riding with those changes through the playoffs then I think we will be seeing [more playoff games].”