BELTON, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor baseball team dropped a 13-inning pitchers' duel to open a three-game series with LeTourneau University Thursday evening in Longview. UMHB dropped to 17-14 overall and 11-11 in American Southwest Conference action while the YellowJackets moved to 12-20 on the year and 9-6 in league play.
The game played 10 errors but neither team was able to pull away, sending the contest into five extra frames. UMHB started the scoring early with a leadoff double by
Kaden deBerardinis followed by an RBI double from
Caimyn Holiday in the first inning. The Cru held onto that 1-0 lead until the bottom of the fifth inning when Devin Greaff hit an RBI double to tie the game at one apiece. A couple batters later, LETU took a 2-1 lead on an RBI single by Dane Jones. The game went scoreless for the next two innings, but in the top of the eighth UMHB retook the lead on a dropped flyball that scored
Ryan Farmer and
Warren Sammons. With just three outs to work with, the Yellowjackets were able to get a couple runners on base and a Cody Stanley sacrifice flyout would score the tying run to send the game into extra innings. LETU threatened to score in the tenth inning but failed to do so as
Caimyn Holiday cut off an infield single and gunned down what would have been the winning run at home. The YellowJackets threatened again in the thirteenth inning and were able to get the winning run across on an RBI single by Andrew Klingenstein to give them the 4-3 victory. Sammons led the Crusaders with two hits in the contest.
James McGlumphy got the start on the mound for UMHB and threw six innings. McGlumphy gave up two runs on four hits and struck out five batters in the quality start.
Trevor Ripke came in relief for the freshman pitcher and threw six innings of his own. Ripke allowed just one run on three hits and struck out six batters.
Zack Honey relieved Ripke in the final frame and allowed one run on one hit on his way to the loss (1-2). Jared Schurig started for LETU as he threw nine innings giving up three runs on six hits and striking out nine UMHB hitters. Schurig was relieved by Sane Salzman who threw a scoreless inning before coming out. Raul Martinez came in and earned the win (2-4) for LETU. Martinez threw three innings and allowed zero runs and two hits.
UMHB looks to bounce back as the series continues on Saturday, April 15th with a doubleheader starting at 1 P.M. in Longview.
