LEWISTON — Cutting it close is the prevailing current theme for the Bates College baseball program.

The Bobcats fell two runs shy of their first-ever New England Small College Athletic Conference playoff appearance last spring.

It was a bittersweet ending to a banner year that saw Bates shatter the school record for victories (25) and break numerous team and individual offensive standards.

So far, Bates’ encore could be summarized by Maxwell Smart’s classic TV catch phrase: “Missed it byyyyy … that much.” Five one-run losses have characterized a 6-10 start that included two southern trips and a weekend series at league powerhouse Tufts.

Then there’s the close shave that haunts every college baseball team within a 100-mile radius at this time of year.

Bates remains scheduled to host Bowdoin in its home opener Friday, even as rain pelted the exposed turf between small banks of residual snow Tuesday afternoon at Leahey Field while the team worked out across the street inside Gray Cage.

“We should be all set. The rain’s helping (to melt) the snow, which is nice, and our field is in pretty good shape,” said Bates coach Mike Leonard. “Two good days of drying, hopefully, and we’ll be out there. We might have to shovel some snow off the warning track.”

First-year boss Leonard doesn’t have to sweat delegating such blue-collar tasks, not with nine seniors wielding a strong ownership in the program and striving to build on last year’s unprecedented success.

“It’s been a long time since this team has been a factor in NESCAC,” senior catcher and designated hitter Gordy Webb of Hampden said. “That’s our goal as seniors and that’s our goal as a team: Get to the playoffs and win the playoffs.”

Bates took a giant leap toward that destination in 2010, more than doubling its win total with a sparkling 25-11 record under second-year coach Edwin Thompson of Jay.

Thompson resigned over the summer to accept an assistant coaching job at Duke. That left the Bobcats’ incoming seniors in the nerve-wracking position of welcoming the third different coach of their career.

It has been a smooth transition. Leonard, like Thompson, is young and energetic with a strong background in college and professional baseball.

After an all-Big East career as a catcher at Connecticut, Leonard signed with the Boston Red Sox and made stops along the minor league pipeline at Lowell, Greenville and Portland. Among his teammates were Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz and Jed Lowrie.

“He’s very well respected by the team. He runs us a little more than Coach Thompson did. I think everybody’s a little scared of him,” Webb said with a laugh. “You don’t want to get on his bad side. Everyone respects him because he’s had experience in the pros. You can’t not listen to him.”

Leonard welcomed back a club that returned almost everyone except one frontline pitcher and a starting middle infielder.

To challenge those veterans, Bates beefed up its winter schedule. Instead of one southern trip to Virginia and the Carolinas, the Bobcats made two separate getaways to Texas and Georgia.

“We played some pretty good teams. It was nice to see teams that were the caliber of the teams we’re going to see in the NESCAC,” Leonard said. “It was the same type of pitching, and we were able to see teams’ one and two (pitchers) and were able to see that we could compete with them. We lost a couple games by a run here and there. I think was a case of give us another couple weeks of practice and it would be a different story.”

Bates dropped three games at Tufts last weekend, including 7-6 and 3-2 verdicts in Sunday’s doubleheader.

“Our biggest problem is execution the last couple of games. When we’re up one run or down one run, we’ve got to step on their throats and give it to ’em,” Webb said. “At Tufts we were up one run and lost it, and up two runs and lost it.

“With a new coach there’s going to be a snowball effect,” he added. “We started off slow. We’re 6-10 right now, but we’re still a team to be reckoned with. Everyone here knows that. People know that we can play. We’ve just got to show ourselves.”

Nobody needs a long memory in order to strengthen that conviction. Before last year, no Bates team had ever won more than 18 games, a record set in 1984 under Chick Leahey.

Last year marked Bates’ first winning season in 17 years.

Sluggers Webb (.250., 12 RBIs) and Jake Simon (.396, 2 HR, 15 RBIs) have led the offense through the season’s first segment. They share the catching and designated hitter duties.

All-conference outfielder and senior co-captain Chris Burke is batting .317 with 11 RBIs. Pat Murphy of Cape Elizabeth (.293) is the other captain.

Sophomore Ryan Sonberg (.346) and junior Mike Ciummei (.325) anchor the infield.

Bates’ pitching rotation features one starter from each of the four classes: Senior Paul Chiampa, junior Karl Alexander (2-1, 3.38 ERA), sophomore Michael Spinosa and freshman Tom Baroni.

Unlike other schools who have a month remaining in the traditional spring semester, Bates is wrapping up its final exam period prior to the traditional May “short term.”

“We’ve got seniors who are working on their thesis, getting ready for a game, battling everything it is that they do as seniors like job interviews and saying goodbye to friends,” Leonard said. “It’s tough in a lot of ways, but I think we’ll be a different team come April 16 when our exams are done and our kids can relax a little bit.”

In that respect, the end of Bates’ schedule is timed perfectly. Starting April 17, the Bobcats will play 10 of 11 games at home.

“Our goal this year is to have a winning record in conference,” Webb said. “That’s what’s going to get you into the playoffs, not being 25-11 like last year but (5-5) in the conference.”

At least for the foreseeable future, Bates seniors probably won’t have to add impressing a new coach to their list of demands.

Leonard said he is here for the long haul and committed to the vision of putting Bates baseball not only in the New England Division III conversation, but beyond.

And merely cutting it close won’t satisfy him on the recruiting trail.

“I don’t think there’s any reason we can’t compete at the top of this league year after year. I wouldn’t have taken this job if I didn’t see a chance to compete and be successful,” Leonard said. “There are kids that we’re going to recruit that are going to have Division I options, and we want them to closely look at us. We hope at the end that they choose Bates because of the education they’re going to get and the experience they’re going to have.”

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