Wind Chill of 23 Degrees? ... No Big Deal.

Sophomores Michael Porcaro and Eric King, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Porcaro is back for his second season of blogging, while King gets his first crack at it. Today is their sixth entry for the 2013 season.

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Hats off to Panther Nation!! We had more fans the whole weekend than UIC in 30-degree weather on the road! You guys are the best! Thank you for traveling and sticking it out in the frigid temps.

Man, there are so many great things to talk about from this weekend, I’ll probably forget a few. I’ll start by saying what a phenomenal job by our pitching staff. Jake Long throws another complete gem and then Tass follows it up with another great start in game two! Incredible! First time we’ve had back-to-back shutouts since 2000. That’s awesome!

The bullpen had its best outing of the year this series. Thicke, EK, Quish, and Josh threw the ball great! Unbelievable job by Quish in game three. We were down 5-zip when he came in and he goes out and keeps us in the game. You might think to yourself, “Yea, whatever the pitchers threw strikes.” No, these guys threw all their pitches for strikes in mid 30-degree temps. Outstanding job by Bigler’s troops!

Oh, I almost forgot about the offense. The bats picked up right where they left off in Wright State. As hard as it is for pitchers to throw in cold weather, it might be just as hard, if not harder to hit in colder temps. But that didn’t stop our bats from hitting bombs! Drewpy did it again, going yahtzee on his birthday! That was one of the coolest things ever! Mitchy slick had an impressive game in game two. Five hits in five at bats with two doubles and his first collegiate home run. Have a day! And he hit the home run into the wind! But no wind can hold top shelf Ghelf in the yard! Sammy Koenig swung the bat real well all weekend, and hit a BOMB in game three!

Supposed to be at "The Hank" this week, but Mother Nature might not allow us to get out there! We’ve been on the road for a while now and are looking forward to playing a home series in front of our fans! We hope to see you all this weekend for a HUGE series against Valpo!

Paco thoughts… Props to Josh Uhen for picking Florida Gulf Coast to beat Georgetown… One week away from Opening Night in the MLB! Spring break felt more like winter break part two… As much as I dislike a lot of things about Chicago (the Cubs and Bears and 99 percent of their fans) I absolutely love the Chicago skyline!

Here’s my boy EK…

Well now that spring break is over it's back to hitting the books. As important as school is, it’s hard to stay focused in class when all we want to do is play ball. We are hotter than a pistol right now and that’s what makes it hard to want to do anything else. Our bats and pitching are unstoppable right now. We let the third game slip on Saturday, but we fought our way back to make it a close play at home to tie the game. Jake Long has been phenomenal, two weekends, back to back throwing a complete game! Then Saturday Tassi came in and threw a great game, and had the bullpen finish it off. One of the most encouraging parts of the weekend is seeing our bullpen coming in and throwing well. The past couple weekends the bullpen has struggled, but it is getting turned around. We still have small glitches to fix yet, but when we do we will be lights out.

I would like to give Drew (light tower power) Pearson a birthday shout out! Hitting another bomb this weekend was the icing on the cake. Great to see the true ROOK of the team swing the bat well.

Again I would like to thank the Panther Nation for making their way to Chicago to support us in the great weather, and hope to see you guys next weekend as we take on Valpo! GO PANTHERS!!!

What's on the Horizon?

Sophomores Michael Porcaro and Eric King, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Porcaro is back for his second season of blogging, while King gets his first crack at it. Today is their fifth entry for the 2013 season.

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Sorry we’ve been out of the blog for the last two weeks. We got back from Evansville a day later than we normally would a few weeks ago and spent the next two days scrambling to get back on track in school. Before we knew it, we were back on a bus to Tennessee. This past week we were on our study grind preparing for mid-terms. STUDENT-athletes!!! But, we’re on spring break now and have some time to give ya an update on what’s going on.

Started our conference season this past weekend with a big series at Wright State. Played very well the majority of the weekend and came back to the Mil with a huge series win! It’s a great start to the conference season but, as always, we gotta keep getting better everyday.

The pitching was excellent this past weekend. Jake Long threw a gem for the second straight week in game one of the series. He had great pace and rhythm, threw strikes and let the defense work behind him. Just found out today he earned Horizon League Pitcher of the Week for his efforts! Congrats to Jake, definitely well deserved. The Tass master gave us a quality start and kept us in the game in game two but, unfortunately, our bats couldn’t give him any run support. Also found out this past week that Tass is a Major League Bowhunter! (check pic) What a stud!

Although it was a tough loss in game two, we had a quick turnaround the following day and still had the opportunity to win the series, which is always the weekend goal. And boy, did the team respond to the challenge. The bats were sizzling!! There should have been a fire extinguisher in our dugout to cool off our bats! We were just spinning balls all over the field. It all starts with Drewpy dropping bombs! Kid has light tower power!! Solberg was banging doubles off the wall! Meeteer was running around the bases like he was on the track team! Man, it was just a lot of fun that day. Nothing better than when your team is clicking on all cylinders. Schneider gave us a quality start as well. He really made some big pitches that limited Wright State from cutting into our lead. There were multiple times where there were runners on and it would be a 2-2 or 3-2 count and Schneids would throw a dirty changeup or breaking ball to get us out of the inning! Clutch pitches! Great to see!

The team decided to have a frat theme bus ride to Dayton this weekend. Most of you probably saw the pic already, but here it is if you haven’t seen it. It seems like we have started a tradition and will have a theme for every bus trip now! Stay tuned to see what theme will be next!!

We had a great showing from Panther nation down in Dayton this past weekend! Thank you to all the family and friends that came out and supported. It almost felt like a home game because you guys were louder than the Wright State fans! Thank you for sticking it out in the rain and cold to watch us! We love you guys!

Paco thoughts… Haven’t even looked at a bracket yet but I like Indiana and Duke a lot… I really wish the USA would have all their players play in the World Baseball Classic… The Imagine Dragons have some chill music check them out… Follow us on Twitter @UWM_Baseball

Ok, here’s EK, byeeeeeeeee

It’s good to be back on the blog grind again. The last couple of weeks were pretty crazy and the blog was put on the DL for a bit. Going into Wright State this past weekend was a series that set the tempo for conference play. Being the first conference series, it was huge to pull out 2 of 3 games against a top team in the Horizon League at their place. The overall weekend was encouraging and fun to watch. Our pitchers were going into deep innings and balls were getting spun left and right. There are still a couple of small adjustments that need to be made but they will come with time and practice. It’s going to be a calm week of practice not having to worry about school, but our focus will need to be higher as we head into one of our biggest rival UIC.

The weather for UIC is going to be incredible! The sun is going to be shining with a slight cloud or two and a high of 36 degrees on Friday and Saturday. With snow making its way to Chicago Tuesday and Wednesday, the conditions could be a little shaky, but we need to look past that. This weekend is going to be a big challenge and not something we can come into lightly. We will need to swing the bats and have our pitchers come out with great starts, but most importantly getting our bullpen an identity. Coming from the pitching staff, that is one of our main focuses. We haven’t been pitching to our ability and that is something that will need to be changed in order to win the close games.

I again would like to congratulate Jake Long on becoming Horizon League Pitcher of the Week! Jake had a little accident the night before his pitching performance. The night before Jake was listening to music with a set of beats earbuds in when he decided he was done he realized the piece was stuck in his ear. Getting all sorts of worried, Jake had trainer Chad and Cale Tassi pulling on his ear while trying to pull in out with a tweezers. I can’t imagine how funny that looked, but anyway long story short they didn’t get it out that so Jake had to sleep with part of his headphones in his ear to have to go see the Wright State doctor in the morning to get it pulled out.

I would also like to claim one thing before I end this blog and that’s calling Big Fly Pearson’s second homerun. He came into the dugout after hitting his first homerun and said, “I’m sitting dead-red on a first pitch slider next at bat and hit that ball out of here!!” Hearing that there was no question in making the call.

To wrap this up, I can’t wait to see you guys in the Windy City of Chicago and I would all prepare to (literally) freeze. We’re looking forward to a great weekend of baseball and can’t wait to win another series! GO PANTHERS!!