Here is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist: The optimist says that Northwestern Lehigh baseball team has won two of its last three games going into the playoffs. A pessimist says the Tigers have won just two of their last six games going into the playoffs.

It’s been that type of regular season for Northwestern.

Three times the Tigers have won three straight games but have not been able to add a fourth.

They only had one stretch of three straight losses, but never lost more than three straight games. They have had three shutout wins and they have been shut out three times.

The Tigers opened last week with a pair of losses to Lehighton and Palmerton as the offense, as it has done at various times, disappeared. They lost to the Indians 9-0 and then fell to the Blue Bombers 7-1.

Even though they weren’t hitting, they drew 16 walks in the two games. Perhaps a larger issue than the lack of hits is that they made four errors that led to all nine runs against Lehighton being unearned. They made three more errors, leading to three more unearned runs against Palmerton.

That’s 12 of the 16 runs that Northwestern allowed being unearned.

A game against Jim Thorpe was rained out and pushed back to an unusual Sunday game last weekend and set up a stretch of three games in three days for the Tigers. The weekend saw a 13-0 win over Northern Lehigh on Saturday and a 9-6 win against Jim Thorpe on Sunday.

In the win against Northern Lehigh, Cole Dynda had himself some fun at the plate.

The junior went 3-for-3 with three runs scored and five runs driven in. Two of his RBI came on his first home run and the other three came on his second home run of the game. Dynda’s third hit was a double.

Griffin Unrath threw four innings on one-hit ball and Jake Carson threw another shutout inning as the Tigers held their rivals to just one hit.

Junior Luke Marrazzo delivered a grand slam in the win over the Olympians.

On Monday, the Tigers were no-hit by a pair of pitchers as Blue Mountain downed Northwestern 10-0 in a nonleague game that finished the regular season.

Northwestern went 12-8 overall and 11-7 record in Colonial League games. Palmerton also finished 11-7 and will be the West Division champions based on having a better record within the division than Northwestern.

That distinction gives the Blue Bombers the fourth seed over Northwestern in the league playoffs. The Tigers will have to travel to Palmerton to play their quarterfinal game on Friday.

Northwestern has qualified for the District 11 playoffs and is third in the Class 4A standings.