Last year, the Waynesburg and Chatham baseball clubs were the two bottom dwellers in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference.

Fast forward to 2019, and things took a drastic turn for the better for one team and remained the same for the other.

After suffering the worst season in head coach Mike Humiston’s lengthy tenure as head coach, Waynesburg has already surpassed its win total from a year ago and is off to a strong start in conference play.

“A lot of that is our leadership,” Humiston said. “We had a couple of guys this year that have helped us from a pitching standpoint and we’ve got some leadership.”

Leading the pitching is the unequivocal ace of the squad, junior Mason Miller. He is the current PAC Pitcher of the Week, and leads the conference in ERA (0.85) and strikeouts (52).

“His velocity is up, he throws four pitches for strikes, and he keeps a lot of guys off-balance,” Humiston said in regards to Miller.

He is also coming off of a marvelous pitching performance against Bethany in which he fanned 15 batters in a complete-game shutout.

“[The team’s] goal is playoffs for sure,” Miller said. “There isn’t any reason we shouldn’t obtain that at this point.”

Now with PAC-leading W&J out of the way, Waynesburg turns its attention to Chatham. The Cougars are in their second official year as a program and have not won a conference game coming into the weekend series with the Yellow Jackets.

“Even though we swept [Chatham] last year, this year is a new year,” Humiston said. “They took W&J into 10 innings the other night and lost 6-3. They’ve gotten better.”

On paper, one would think that the series is going to be a whitewash. After all, Chatham is the penultimate team in the conference in team batting average (.245) and has a combined ERA of 10.04, easily the worst in the conference.

Offensively, the Cougars are led by freshman Caleb Lehman, who is fourth in the PAC in batting average (.400), fifth in slugging percentage (.612), and sixth in on-base percentage (.474). In comparison, no Waynesburg batter is in the top-10 in batting average, Justin Buberl is eighth in slugging percentage (.534), and Tyler Reis is eighth in on-base percentage (.471).

Despite what the numbers may say, there is one number that Humiston and his team have used as a motivating factor.

“The preseason polls had us at sixth,” Humiston said. “Our motivation is to make sure that every time we play a conference game, remember that the other coach picked us sixth. I think it’s a respect thing and our guys are determined to make sure we are one of the top four teams in the conference.”

If things go Waynesburg’s way, it will qualify for the PAC playoffs for the first time in four years. While it is early, Waynesburg certainly believes that it can, and winning the season series against teams like Chatham is a good way to turn doubters into believers.