Thirty games into the 2026 Penn State baseball season, and there aren’t many people who could’ve imagined the season going the way it has so far after the progress that was made over the prior two seasons in reviving a long-dormant program.

At 9-21 and 3-9 in Big Ten play, the Nittany Lions are in the midst of a tremendously disappointing season that suddenly has just over one month left in the regular season. What once seemed like an inevitability in making the Big Ten Tournament has now become a challenge, as the Nittany Lions currently sit outside the field.

“We’re not playing baseball the way any of us want to play,” said head coach Mike Gambino. “This is not the standard we’ve set over the last two years.”

But to be disappointed about how a season is going, you need to build yourselves into a position where you have the expectations of being a good team. Earlier in the season, Gambino talked about scheduling a difficult non-conference schedule to give the team enough quality opponents so that, if the team continued its upward trajectory, it would be able to build an NCAA Tournament at-large resume.

That, of course, hasn’t happened, as the program is being forced to learn that progress isn’t always linear. But Gambino knows that, as he enters the second half of his third season at the helm, the program is still moving in the right direction after 25 years of accepting mediocrity.

“I’m glad we’re in this spot where, for 25 years of this program, this is just how it was,” said Gambino. “And now, none of us are happy where we are, but we have a long way to go.”

While the team needs nothing more than to stack a consistent streak of victories to gain tangible momentum, they can be encouraged by their previous four games.

In an extraordinarily difficult circumstance on the road against No. 19 Nebraska last weekend, Penn State jumped out to an early lead in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader and led into the sixth inning, ultimately losing by a run. It then battled back from an early five-run deficit to get the tying run to the plate of Sunday’s series finale, with the bullpen delivering some of its best work of the season. While the Cornhuskers still swept Penn State, it played 18 innings of quality baseball against its toughest opponent of the year.

Turning around to the second Dollar Dog Night of the season on Tuesday against the Northeastern Conference-leading FDU Knights, the Nittany Lions pulled off an 11-5 victory behind an early offensive explosion and strong bullpen effort.

The offense was spearheaded by the team’s two offensive stalwarts, as both designated hitter Michael Anderson and infielder Bryce Molinaro finished a home run shy of the cycle. Anderson’s slashing a blistering .381/.500/.819 and figures to threaten multiple program records, while Molinaro has shrugged off an early-season slump to currently be sporting a career-high .990 OPS.

“When the numbers weren’t there, his expected stats were way better than what he was at, and I knew it would normalize, and now it’s normal,” Gambino said on Tuesday about Molinaro. “He’s driving the baseball to all fields and just having better at-bats consistently.”

One thing that’s going to have to continue for Penn State to start stacking wins is better bullpen play. Over the last two games against Nebraska and FDU, it has combined to toss 13 innings and allow just two runs. On a staff that’s had to rely on a number of freshmen so far, one that’s stood out is Robert Brown III, who’s had scoreless multi-inning outings on both Dollar Dog Nights this season.

“100%,” Brown said when asked if the excitement of Dollar Dog Night motivates him to play his best baseball. “Having the crowd here is absolutely unbelievable. It’s probably 40 degrees at first pitch, and we still have 2,000 people out here. We have an amazing student section with Section 814; it’s hard not to thrive in front of that home crowd.”

The freshman has had an uneven season to this point, as have most pitchers on the roster, but he’s caught the eye of Gambino, who’s been giving him more and more high-leverage innings. He figures to be a big part of the team’s bullpen for years to come.

“He’s part of this freshman class that continues to grow and develop and is going to be a centerpiece moving forward,” said Gambino about Brown. “He’s going to be a really good bullpen arm for us.”

“Coming from high school, it’s definitely a huge adjustment,” said Brown about his freshman year. “I played in a pretty talented league back in Massachusetts, but it’s nothing compared to what it is here.

“It’s a huge adjustment, but Coach [Will] Jauss, Coach Ford [Jauss], Coach Gambino, they’ve done an amazing job at preparing the freshmen from the fall to now, to get to a point where you’re able to go out in front of a crowd of 2,000 and still perform and have your best stuff.”

With a trip to Columbus to battle rival Ohio State coming on Friday, Gambino told the media that he planned to have men’s hockey coach Guy Gadowsky speak to the team on Wednesday to “let them hear a different voice.”

Progress isn’t always measured in victories, but the team knows that, at some point, it needs to show in the win column.

“When you’re going through a funk, you need to feel a win,” Gambino said. “There’s a science behind feeling that win, so we’re resetting tomorrow but we’re carrying forward the mentality of, good win yesterday, but our win tomorrow is how we go about our day, how we go about our practice, how do we execute the things that we’re going to work on, and then get another win right there and then get in the weight room after practice and get a win there. Just continue to stack these wins until you start to feel good again.”

“Even if you backtrack a bit to Nebraska, obviously the outcome wasn’t what we wanted, but we put up two great games against a very good team, and then you come in here tonight and put up another 10 runs and get a win,” said Brown. “I think you put those pieces together, going into Columbus this weekend against Ohio State is huge for us. It gives you so much confidence.

“You get the taste of winning, and you just want to keep getting it. You get addicted to it.”