KEENE SENTINEL: "Postseason Push"

Area pitcher helps FPU rev up for NE-10 and NCAA tourney runs

By Ken Murphy, Keene Sentinel

RINDGE - A few days before the Franklin Pierce baseball team departed for its annual spring trip to Florida, ace right-hander Mike Adams said that one of the team's goals for the season was to win all of its games in the Sunshine State.

Going 3-8 in Florida was not part of the plan. Neither was losing the first two games back to fall to 7-11, and neither was losing last year's top two starters to season-ending injuries, including Adams, the defending Northeast-10 Conference pitcher of the year.

Yet here at the start of the double-elimination semifinals of the NE-10 tournament, Franklin Pierce is in a familiar position. The two-time defending NE-10 champion Ravens, the No. 1 seed, host No. 5 New Haven today at 4 p.m. at Dr. Pappas Field.

One of the main reasons Franklin Pierce (33-15, 24-6) has been able to withstand the loss of Adams and lefty Brian Maloney - who combined for 19 of the team's 43 wins last season - is the emergence of senior left-hander Tom Cote as one of the team's undisputed leaders and one of its top starters.

Then again, it's not as if Cote's spectacular season is a surprise to baseball fans in the Monadnock Region. Cote led Monadnock Regional High to the Class I state championship in 2005. A year earlier, as a high school junior, the Swanzey native threw a perfect game against Fall Mountain at Alumni Field. Cote had a full summer of success at Alumni Field four years later as one of the best pitchers on the Swamp Bats, going 5-0 last summer with a 1.78 ERA in relief with 35 strikeouts in 251/3 innings.

With the Ravens, all Cote has done prior to this season is make the All-NE-10 first-team as a sophomore - his first season with the team after transferring from UMass-Amherst - to winning the clinching game in each of the past two NE-10 tournaments.

Yet for all of his on-field success, this is the first season Cote can truly be considered one of the team's top starters. In each of the past two seasons, Cote was the fourth or fifth option.

After winning the clinching game in the past two NE-10 tournaments, Cote saw the rest of the postseason from the dugout. He has pitched a total of two-thirds of an inning in each of the Ravens' past two appearances in the NCAA Northeast Regional tournament and College World Series.

This season, if the three-time defending NCAA Northeast Regional champion Ravens are to win the regional a fourth straight time and advance to the College World Series for the fifth time in six years, Cote will most certainly have to play a vital role.

Cote said that his transition to ace-in-waiting came shortly after the team's return from Florida. Coach Jayson King met with each player to discuss personal goals. Within three weeks, both Adams (elbow) and Maloney (shoulder) would be done for the season, but Cote was just getting warmed up.

"I told him I felt I should be throwing shutouts every time I pitched," Cote said of the meeting.

He almost has. In eight starts since the Florida trip, Cote (9-2) has allowed eight earned runs in 59 innings. His 301/2 scoreless innings streak that ended April 28 is second in program history to the 341/3 inning scoreless streak produced by Shane Presutti in 2006.

Cote leads the team in wins and is second on the staff with a 1.62 ERA. Junior righty Kyle Vazquez (8-0), today's starter, totes a 1.36 ERA into the tournament.

Cote is scheduled to start Saturday - today's winners play at 3 p.m., the losers play at 11 a.m. In the other semifinal, No. 6 UMass-Lowell takes on No. 2 Assumption tonight at 7.

Even with a healthy Adams and Maloney, it would be tough for the Ravens to bury Cote at the end of the rotation again.

"This year he's arguably been the No. 1 or No. 2 guy the entire year," King said. "If he had the season he had last year for us this year, we would have been in trouble."

Cote and King said Cote's Swamp Bats season was a big reason for his successful senior season.

"He carried it into the season. He knew he could do certain things to certain hitters," King said. "He definitely stepped it up a little bit."

Swamp Bats Coach Marty Testo said that the team worked with Cote at the beginning of the season to try to clear his hips more in his delivery, lessening his rotation and allowing him better extension and a more downhill delivery.

"Tommy worked hard," Testo said. "He tended to it every day. I think the most important thing for Tommy was a chance to pitch at that level and to prove to himself he could be successful. And he was. He was our best guy out of the bullpen and our most consistent pitcher all year. He didn't really have a bad outing.

"He got a ton of (swinging) strikeouts on his fastball, and that's pretty good to do at that level."

Cote, who has always been able to keep hitters honest with his curve, said that his season with the Swamp Bats gave him more confidence in his fastball, which tops out in the upper 80s.

"The catchers were putting down a lot of fastballs, so I kept throwing it," he said. "I kind of figured out that it's a good pitch and realized I could get it by people. That definitely instilled confidence in me somewhere, even if it's not something I really think about."

After going 1-4 with a 6.93 ERA for UMass-Amherst as a freshman, Cote made the All-NE-10 first team in his first year with the Ravens, going 7-1 with a 2.63 ERA while pitching behind Arric Mather, Keith Renaud and Adams in the rotation.

Last season, Cote went 4-2 with a 3.11 ERA, but was still behind Adams, Maloney and Vazquez in the rotation.

Maybe it's because he's trusting his fastball more, or maybe because he knows this is his final season of college ball, but Cote is also having a lot more fun than he's had in the past.

"He's enjoying it, he's having fun," Adams said. "Before, he wouldn't want anyone talking to him (in the dugout). Now he's joking around with everyone.

"His mound presence is totally different than it was last season. He doesn't let the little things bother him anymore, and (the result) is that he's pretty much been unhittable," Adams said.

"Whatever he's doing (differently) it's definitely working for him."

With the Ravens a virtual lock for an NCAA Northeast Regional bid, Cote will have at least two more starts. After that, his baseball future is uncertain.

For now, Cote is still a Raven - and he couldn't be happier about it.

"It hasn't hit home yet," Cote said of his college baseball career winding down. "I want to keep the fun going and keep playing and I think we have the team to do that.

"I'd give anything to keep playing, and if it happens, it happens. But I'm not going to think about it right now."