Michael Dailey remained undefeated, picking up his fourth straight win to lead VCU to a 3-0 shutout of (17)ECU Tuesday afternoon at Clark-LeClair Stadium.
The Rams tossed a three-hitter using three different pitchers to end a five game win streak for ECU(12-4). Jake Agnos took the midweek loss to fall to 1-2 on the season. Paul Witt delivered a pair of RBI to lead VCU at the plate in the victory.
Ben Dum c0llected his second save of the year, closing the deal in four innings of work for the Rams.
Agnos pitched pretty well for the Pirates, lasting five and a third innings giving up three runs on four hits with four strikeouts in 82 pitches before yielding to Davis Kirkpatrick. Ryan Ross then came on in the seventh to shut VCU(9-8) down and give ECU a chance to try to make a comeback.
“He pitched well enough to win, but he still has to be a little bit better. We didn’t pitch terrible but we just didn’t pitch good enough to win and obviously you can’t win if you don’t score. We’ve just got to be better,” Godwin said.
“VCU was very good on the mound today and we just broke the chain too many times offensively. We’d have a good at-bat then bad-bad, good at-bat.”
“We were trying to get on top of the baseball again because the conditions weren’t good offensively. They didn’t give us many free base runners and we gave them six free base runners and a couple of those guys scored, so that was the difference in the game.”
The two teams remained scoreless until the fifth inning when Paul Witt singled to center to bring two Ram runners home and give VCU a 2-0 lead.
Then in the top of the sixth Josh Simon’s base hit up the middle allowed Zac Ching to score to make it 3-0.
Alec Burleson reached when Daane Berezo bobbled the catch at second base to get something going for the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth.
After Josh Netterville came on for Burleson with one out in the ninth, Brady Lloyd slapped a much needed double down the left field line to put ECU runners on second and third. Seth Caddell then came on to pinch hit for Nick Barber but he grounded out to short to end the threat.
ECU resumes action Wednesday afternoon when the Pirates host Elon at 4 0'clock.
