For the last few weeks, the East Carolina baseball team has been seemingly running against the wind.

On Saturday, the Pirates definitely felt the breeze at their backs in a much-needed 11-4 victory over visiting Monmouth.

It wasn’t hard to pinpoint which way the wind was blowing, as five fly balls found the strong breeze blowing out to right-center field and carried out of Clark-LeClair Stadium for home runs, four of them off Pirate bats.

Zach Wright crushed a pair of homers and drove in four runs for ECU (10-8), and Kyle Roller and Devin Harris also went deep and drove in two apiece in the win. For Harris, it was the third home run in two days, and just the Pirates’ third win in eight games.

John Wooten also continued to swing a hot bat, finishing the day 3-for-5.

“Hopefully, there’s plenty more,” ECU skipper Billy Godwin said of the offensive showing. “I made out a lineup today and I was like, ‘Whoa, this a pretty good lineup offensively.’ We’ve moved people around to try to find the right combination. When these guys are clicking on all cylinders, this is a good team.”

One of the adjustments was moving Wright — a catcher who tried his hand at left field in Friday’s 11-9 loss — back behind the plate. Godwin moved regular starting backstop Jared Avchen into the designated hitter slot and gave Roller his first start of the season at first base.

By all accounts, it worked.

“I never played left field before in my life,” said Wright, who became one in a handful of players to man left field this season. “Thank God I only had three balls hit to me. (At the plate) I’ve been seeing the ball great ?EUR? and if I keep swinging the bat I’m sure they’ll find a place in the lineup for me.”

ECU starter Seth Maness (3-2) was steady in earning his third victory of the season. He threw 72/3 innings, allowed four runs on eight hits, walked one and fanned eight.

The series rubber match is at 1 p.m. today.

The Pirates broke the game open in the middle innings, scoring six times over the fifth and sixth to stretch a 5-4 lead into a commanding 11-4 edge.

With one out in the fifth, Harris and Wright launched consecutive solo shots to right-center to make it 7-4 Pirates. In the sixth, ECU cashed in four more times thanks in large part to a pair of Monmouth errors, two hit batsmen and three walks, the last two with the bases loaded.

The Pirates broke a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the third, shelling the Hawks (3-5) for four runs and a 5-1 lead after Harris ripped an RBI double to left and Wright reached out and smashed a three-run homer to the opposite field.

“It’s funny because in practice I can’t really hit it the other way, and last year the only thing I could do was pull the ball,” said Wright, who had his first-ever multi-homer game. “But if it goes that way, I might as well just ride it.”

Wooten beat out his second infield single in as many at-bats and Corey Thompson walked to set the table for the quick scoring salvo.

No ECU lead has been safe in recent weeks, however, and Monmouth pounced on Maness in the top of the fourth to prove that trend. Danny Avella walked, Bobby Dombrowksi singled with one out, and Cal Costanzo found the same air stream that carried Wright’s first homer out of the park, cutting the lead to 5-4 with his own three-run blast.

Roller made sure the Pirates didn’t wait to get started, tattooing a Kyle Breese pitch off the scoreboard in right-center to put ECU up 1-0 in the first inning. It was Roller’s 44th career home run.

Monmouth matched the run on Ryan Terry’s sacrifice fly in the third.

Contact Nathan Summers at nsummers@reflector.com or (252)329-9595.