Mens Baseball
Menlo 7, McPherson 1
Date of competition: Friday, February 15, 2013
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Menlo (3-3) welcomed McPherson College (1-2) to Cartan Field on Friday for their regular season home opener. The Oaks were able to take advantage of great pitching and late inning runs to win by a final of 7-1 and improve to 3-3 on the season.
Senior Right-hander Derek Martinez got the start on the mound for Menlo and surrendered just one run but collected a no-decision for his efforts in 5 innings of work. Martinez allowed the one run on three hits, while striking out 8 and walking 1.
Martinez was pleased with the way he was able to mix up his pitches and keep his team in the game early on.
“My fastball was definitely working. I was able to hit my spots early on and get ahead. Later on in the game I was able to use my off speed pitches because they hadn’t seen them yet. I got a lot of strike outs off of that,” said Martinez
Following the one run scored by McPherson in the top of the first, the Oaks pitching staff put together a great performance, facing just 4 batters over the minimum for the remainder of the afternoon. Freshman Eric Davila collected the win in relief for the Oaks. Davila worked 2 scoreless innings allowing just 1 hit walking 2 and striking out 2. Dustin Nakayama and Ryan Buscemi each worked a scoreless inning in relief for the Oaks.
Head coach Stefan McGovern was very pleased with the way his team pitched this afternoon.
“Pitching was outstanding today. Martinez’s pitch count was up early but that happens when you strike out a lot of guys. It was good to see our bullpen come in and be as effective as he [Martinez] was,” mentioned McGovern.
Offensively, it took the Oaks until the bottom of the fifth inning to finally tie the game off of Bulldog starter Scott Hughes. In the fifth, Coleman Cox led off with a single and moved to third when Corey Metoyer followed suite with a single of his own. With runners at the corners, Sam Shapiro ripped a fly ball to deep center for an RBI sac fly, scoring Cox.
The bottom of the seventh proved to be the inning the Menlo bats came alive. Menlo sent 9 batters to the plate and scored a total of 4 runs in the inning on 4 hits and 2 walks.
Shapiro had an RBI double in the inning and John Bowling, Kyer Vega and Jimmy Bosco all added singles. When the inning was complete, Menlo lead 5-1 and never looked back.
“Offensively we struggled mightily early but we were able to make adjustments. This is one of those teams where they aren’t going to throw high velocity guys and we were just trying to do too much. It was nice to see them make adjustments though,” said McGovern.
Menlo tacked on 2 more runs in the bottom of the ninth taking advantage of walks drawn by Scott Drier and Shapiro. A Mickey Phelps pinch-hit RBI single loaded the bases for Bowling who came through with a 2-run single to left to extend the Oaks lead to 7-1.
Menlo will be back in action on Saturday with a double header against McPherson. Game 1 will be a 9-inning contest starting at noon with game 2 to follow. Derek Rodrigues is set to start game 1 and Joey Webb will go in game 2.
-- Menlo College Athletics
posted by re on Feb 15, 2013 at 9:25 pm
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