DENVER – While Matt Malkin (Broomfield, Colo./Monarch) captured the attention of nearly everyone who follows NCAA Division II baseball during a month of "Malkin Madness," Chase Anderson (Littleton, Colo./Columbine) started hitting.
 
And hitting.
 
And hitting.
 
Anderson, the No. 2 batter in the MSU Denver lineup, has flown a bit under the radar considering that he's riding a 16-game hitting streak, which includes having at least two hits in each of his last eight games.
 
The sophomore who played one season at Lamar (Colo.) Community College is now batting .376 with five homers and 25 RBIs and, heading into this weekend's four-game series at Colorado Christian, he's tied for third in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference with 44 hits.
 
"He just got off to a slow start, and that's more surprising than how he's actually playing now," Metropolitan State University of Denver coach Ryan Strain said. "This is kind of what we were counting on. He had a slow start, but he never hung his head. There was never a question about taking him out of the lineup because I knew what he was capable of doing."
 
Anderson will try to keep it going for the Roadrunners (20-8 overall, 13-3 and tied for first in the RMAC) in games with Colorado Christian (8-21, 3-13 and tied for eighth) that include Friday's 3 p.m. opener, Saturday's 3 p.m. single game and Sunday's noon doubleheader.
 
Over his last eight games, Anderson is batting .472 (17-for-36). Harder to believe is that he's been even better over the course of his 16-game streak, batting .493 (34-for-69).
 
"I'm seeing the ball really well, but I feel like I'd be doing even better if I was swinging at better pitches," Anderson said. "But the good pitches that I have been getting, I've been putting good swings on them and catching barrels, and they're falling."
 
Anderson decided to look to move on from Lamar after one season due to a coaching change. He'd hit .345 (48-for-139) with two homers, 27 RBIs, 10 doubles and five stolen bases for the Lopes.
 
His first call was to Strain and MSU Denver.
 
"It was close to home, close to my family, which was huge," Anderson said. "And I could tell that this program is on the rise, and I wanted to be a part of that."
 
During fall ball, it became obvious that Anderson was going to be a vital part of the Roadrunners' lineup.
 
"I knew there was going to be good competition," Anderson said. "But I also knew that no one was going to work harder than I did, so it was just a matter of me out-performing everyone. I had a really good fall, kind of showed the coaches that I'm the kind of player they want on the field, that I want to win more than anything else. I think that's why I'm playing."
 
Strain said he'd known about Anderson for several years, well before Anderson made contact this past offseason.
 
"I remember seeing him play as a young kid," Strain said. "The organization he played for always raved about the kind of player he was, that he always played hard. So when we had a chance to get him I knew that we were getting a guy who plays hard and has a good swing. He can hit. Then he came in and had a great fall, really played well. I knew he'd hit somewhere at the top of the order for us."
 
Anderson actually started the season in an 0-for-17 slump – he's hitting .440 (44-for-100) ever since.
 
"I think I was a little unlucky the first series," Anderson said. "I had a lot of hard-hit balls that went right at guys. I just tried not to get discouraged and tried to find the positives in going 0-for-4 with a couple of hard-hit balls – that's still a successful day. You'd rather have that than going 2-for-4 with two bloop hits. I just tried to stay positive and understood that things weren't as bad as they seemed."
 
Anderson launched two of his home runs this past week – one in a win over Division I Northern Colorado on March 26 and a tiebreaking, three-run homer in the seventh inning Saturday against Regis to provide the game's final runs.
 
"My approach is gap-to-gap," Anderson said. "I'm just trying to get on. But I know that if a pitcher makes a mistake, I'm going to try to hit it out. I just try to get to second base so the guys behind me can score me."
 
The guys behind Anderson in the MSU Denver lineup are Logan Soole (Louisville, Colo./Monarch) (batting .329 with eight homers and 29 RBIs) and the aforementioned Malkin, who leads NCAA Division II in homers (18), homers per game (0.67), RBIs per game (1.81) and slugging percentage (1.029), while also competing for the RMAC Triple Crown with a .433 batting average that ranks second in the league to go with league-leading totals in homers and RBIs (49).
 
"It's pretty fun knowing that the pitcher doesn't really want to walk you," Anderson said. "So you get a lot of better pitches to hit when they look on deck and see Soole, with Malkin behind him. I feel like I get a lot more mistakes than other hitters might."
 
While Anderson's position in the lineup may be fortunate, it is also important.
 
"He's going to get good pitches to hit," Strain said. "The key to our success is (leadoff hitter Zach) Paschke and Chase in front of those two guys, and (Cade) Peters and Draven (Adame) behind them. If those four play well, we will win a lot of games. Because then teams are going to have to make some decisions (about whom to challenge and whom to avoid).
 
"The games that we've swung the bats well, Zach and Chase have swung the bats well. They're on base ahead of everyone else and those other guys drive them in."
 
It's probably no coincidence then, that Anderson's 16-game hitting streak included the school-record 14-game winning streak that was snapped in Monday's 6-4 loss to Regis.
 
That loss, combined with an early-season 7-0 non-conference loss to Colorado Christian, figure to serve as ample motivation for the Roadrunners this weekend.
 
"I hoped we were going to be able to get through the Regis series not playing great and still get those wins, and not have to use a loss as motivation," Strain said. "But now you've got that motivation, and you've also got the motivation from losing to Christian."
 
In the first meeting, MSU Denver played without Soole and Adame due to injuries, and starting pitcher TJ Egloff (Brighton, Colo./Brighton) – the reigning RMAC Pitcher of the Week – wasn't sharp in his first start of the season.
 
"But we just didn't play very well in any area," Strain said.
 
Anderson said the Roadrunners are focused heading into the weekend.

"We just want to get back to playing harder than the other team," Anderson said. "I think we got complacent during the winning streak. Not that you shouldn't come to the field expecting to win, but I think we started coming to the field expecting to win without trying as hard as the other team. That loss is going to light a fire under us to stay focused and keep playing hard going forward."