Baseball Records Dominant Season

The 2023 Fire baseball season had just a little bit of everything.
 
Walk-off wins, high-powered offense, shutdown pitching, and championship celebrations were among the highlights of a 58-6 season which included a fifth-straight trip to the Avista NAIA World Series.
 
The Fire won 50+ games for the sixth time in seven years with the shortened 2020 season the lone exception.
 
Expectations were high for a group that was coming off a 59-4 year that claimed the national championship and faced one of the toughest schedules in the country. The Fire won their first 25 games of the season which also included nine-straight run-rule wins before a 7-4 loss to eventual World Series participant Bellevue.
 
Southeastern secured its fourth straight Sun Conference regular season title with a three-game sweep of Florida Memorial on April 22^nd, doing so with another series still to play. Pitcher JJ Sanchez was dominant that day, striking out 11 of the 14 hitters he faced with just one of the 68 pitches he threw put into play.
 
The Fire were tested during The Sun Conference Tournament, having to rally back from a 5-0 fifth inning deficit to win on Stephen Cullen's one-out sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth. They also had to bounce back after being shutout by Warner in the semifinal for the first time since the 2018 season to win two elimination games before collecting the tournament title with a 19-4 win in the 'if necessary' game.
 
The pitching staff came through in a big way during the Fayette Bracket of the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament, limiting two of the top 10 slugging teams in the NAIA to just six runs and eight extra-base hits over 27 innings to earn a trip back to Lewiston for the World Series.
 
It was a late night in Lewiston to start the tournament with weather and high-scoring affairs pushing the Fire back to a 9:35 p.m. Pacific time first pitch against the host Lewis-Clark State. A three-run homer by Chayce Bryant in the bottom of the eighth was the difference in a 5-2 game that ended after midnight local time.
 
After struggling to keep pace with William Carey on Memorial Day, the Fire had to fight through the losers' bracket to stay alive. The top-seeded Fire overcame a three-run deficit to knock off Indiana Wesleyan behind a 3-for-4 showing by David Castillo, then got a big-time performance from Sanchez and a two-homer game from Nicholas Block to defeat Westmont to advance to a winner-to-the-championship game against Westmont once again.
 
The Fire ran out of steam in Game 64, with seven walks, four hit batsmen, and a couple of defensive miscues in a 6-4 loss to eventual champion Westmont.
 
"When the expectations are to win the last game of the year in your program, you feel like you've created something special," said coach Adrian Dinkel. "But that's tough to put on any program where they feel like they have to win the last game of the year but they did a great job all year long."  
 
The Fire had three First-Team All-Americans in pitchers Darien Smith and Reece Wissinger along with shortstop Isaac Nunez.
 
Southeastern finished first in the NAIA in team ERA at 2.87 and posted an incredible 12.33 strikeouts per nine inning average with 726 total. At the plate, The Fire were tops in homers with 154 and hits with 754. The team finished with a .451 on base percentage and a .634 slugging percentage.