After wins over Allen and Bethlehem Catholic to open the season, the Emmaus baseball team has lost two straight games by a combined score of 21-6.

Liberty used a nine-run first inning on its way to a 13-4 win over the Hornets and Nazareth put up seven runs in the first two innings to beat Emmaus 8-2.

Coming into the season, pitching was going to be a question mark for the team, with some young pitchers being depended on to step up into important roles.

The problem hasn’t been all pitching, though. In the loss to Liberty, shoddy fielding hurt Emmaus, allowing 10 of the 13 runs to be unearned in the loss.

With a couple of plays being made early, Emmaus could have held the Hurricanes to just three or four runs in the first inning, making it an entirely different game. By the end of the game, Emmaus had collected just four hits off a strong Liberty staff, but had made six errors in the game.

The Hornets went on to make another three errors in the loss to Nazareth.

“It’s tough to overcome bad defense, especially when you’ve got some young pitchers,” said coach Mike Mihalik. “For the most part, a lot of our pitchers have done a nice job and have thrown strikes and mixed their pitches well, but when we’re kicking the ball around and not making even routine plays, your pitchers can only do so much.”

Junior Eric Cichocki has been impressive out of the leadoff spot for Emmaus and is hitting .500 in the early going for the Green Hornets. While the rest of the lineup struggled to hit against Liberty, Cichocki pounded out three hits for the team. George Smith had three of Emmaus’ nine hits in the loss to Nazareth.

The annual game at Coca-Cola Park, which was scheduled for this past Saturday against Whitehall had to be postponed by the snow that fell in the area. The game will now be made up under the lights at 8 p.m. on April 22.

Pitching is definitely a large part of the story for Emmaus. In its two wins, starting pitchers have both turned in strong outings, with Todd Moxey going six shutout innings against Beca before handing the game over to Logan Foley, who collected the save. Against Allen, Matt Lanzone also went six strong innings, with Foley pitching the seventh.

The offense also combined for 17 hits in those games, including Moxey going 3-for-5 with two runs scored and three RBIs against Allen. George Smith also drove in Cichocki two of the three times that he got on base, in the win over Bethlehem Catholic.

“We can hit, but we’ve run into some tough pitching, too,” said Mihalik. “There are less question marks about the offense than about the pitching.

“That’s not to say that as these kids continue to get better, that our pitching won’t become strong for us, too.”

Emmaus travels to East Stroudsburg North on Thursday before trying again to play on a Saturday, this time at home against Reading.

The Hornets’ other two games that were scheduled for Saturdays – against Scranton Prep and Whitehall – were both postponed because of weather.