Even though the Riverhawks baseball squad finished 23-30 in the regular season, the team clinched a playoff spot for the first time since 2018 and won more than 20 games for the first time in six years.

The Riverhawks will face in the College of Southern Maryland Hawks in the first round of the playoffs on Tuesday at noon. Relief pitcher Matt Wisniewski said he is “fired up” about the postseason.

“I’m excited,” Wisniewski, a second-year transfer studies student, noted. “I feel like it’s a turnaround from last year. You know, we have a great environment, a great team and [I] think that we can do a lot of good things in the playoffs if we just play our game.”

Second baseman John Greenawalt hit .380 in the regular season to lead the Riverhawks. Shortstop Dyllon Barrett, who hit .291 this year, led the league with 44 stolen bases. Infielder and pitcher Ethan Grieb led the squad with five home runs. 

Wisniewski said he credits the coaching staff for the team’s best season since 2017.

“The way they’ve changed the culture here, it’s definitely noticeable,” Wisniewski said. “And, you know, hopefully they keep it going for years to come.”

Head baseball coach Nick Hoffner said the way the Riverhawks will make a run in the playoffs is through a “combined effort” from the whole team.

“It’s going to be numerous pitchers that we need to step up and give us some quality innings on the mound,” Hoffner said. “Obviously it’s a longer day [and] we just need to keep playing well defensively and then we got to find a way to keep swinging the bats well and score some runs to support the pitching.”

Right handed starting pitcher Kyle Wortz agreed. 

“Just solid defense, good pitching and scoring more runs than they do,” Wortz, a first-year computer science student, said.

Hoffner said winning more than 20 games “definitely feels good. I feel like we got a good mix of guys here as far as freshmen and sophomores. That’s definitely helped us get [to] the next level.”