Wright State scored four runs in the second inning and pounded out six more in the seventh inning to do the bulk of their damage in a 12-4 win over ECU Saturday night in the Keith LeClair Classic at Clark-LeClair Stadium.
Three players with two hits for Wright State including a home run and a double from Peyton Berdick highlighted one of the Raiders’ best outings of the season. Zane Collins improved to 1-2 with the win, going five and two thirds innings of work, giving up just one run on three hits in 58 pitches before Tristan Haught and big Sam Hersing, all right handers, came on to shut the door on the Pirates.
Pirate starting pitcher Jake Agnos fell to 1-1 with the loss for ECU(7-4) wasn’t particularly pleased with his own performance Saturday night.
“That’s my fault that we lost. I didn’t give my team a chance to win. I take responsibility for that. I should have made better pitches. A lot of those counts were two strike counts. If I make a better pitch, I strike them out or they make weak contact,” said Agnos after the game, “I let that dropped third strike speed me up and did a poor job of slowing it down after that so I just need to be better than that. Maybe if it’s two runs, 2-0 is a lot better than 4-0 so that second inning allowed the other team to get a lot of momentum.”
Dusty Baker said the Pirates didn’t ride the momentum of the game one victory earlier in the day carry over to the nightcap.
“We came out ready to go to finish game one and had our minds right and then didn’t flip the switch for game two,” Dusty Baker said, “We’re doing what we can do to try to put a whole baseball game together. We’ve done it at times and we haven’t done it at times.”
“We’ve got a target on our back but we’ve earned that and we want that,” Baker said, “We’ve got to do a better job of being ready and playing ourselves, not necessarily the other team.”
Pirate head coach Cliff Godwin expressed his frustration with the Saturday night loss but was balanced in his assessment.
“At the end of the day, like Dusty just said, we’re trying to play the best version of ourselves and definitely not doing that consistently right now.”
“It’s always frustrating when you don’t feel like we played your best baseball regardless of if it’s after a win or after a loss. I was really proud of the guys. We got the two run lead in the first game, gave it up and they scrapped back and win in extra innings which is big. You’ve got to learn how to win in extra innings.”
“I thought Evan Voliva pitched great. To see Dusty Baker coming in healthy and giving us the game winning hit. Then in game two it wasn’t good on either side,” Godwin said, “Jake threw some good 0-2 pitches that he wishes he could have had back, but he stuck in there and hung in there and gave us some length after he had thrown like fifty pitches in two innings which is key because then you can save some of your bullpen.”
“Then offensively, just really disappointed that we didn’t stick to our approach one through nine and our whole goal was to get into their bullpen a lot earlier,” said Godwin, “Now when you give up a four spot it’s tougher to do anything but sit back and hit which against a good pitcher it’s tough to just hit a four-run jack.”
The Raiders wasted little time getting after ECU starter Jake Agnos in the top of the second inning. They scored four runs on a Chase Slone based loaded grounder for a run followed by two RBI doubles from Justin McConnell and Brandon Giltrow to give Wright State an early 4-0 lead.
Wright State(4-3) added to their lead in the fifth when A Alders’ double to left scored another run to increase their cushion to 5-0.
ECU got on the scoreboard to cut the lead to 5-1 in the sixth when Ryder Giles singled to third base an a throwing error allowed Spencer Brickhouse to score from second base. That ended right hander Zane Collins’ day on the mound after 102 pitches, seven strikeouts and three hits in five and two-thirds innings of work. Tristan Haught came on in sixth inning for the Raiders.
In the top of the seventh, a fielding error followed by a wild pitch and base hit off the second base bag found runners on the corners for Wright State.
Carter Spivey then came on for Cam Colmore on the mound for ECU. Peyton Berdick promptly hammered a rocket for a double to the left centerfield gap that scored two more runs to make the score 7-1.
As the seventh inning continued, Zane Harris’ pinch hit single that got past Dusty Baker in centerfield put runners on the corners for the Raiders. Then a hard shot from Seth Gray added insult to injury to make it 8-1 before base hits from Tyler Black and Brandon Giltrow in the same frame put three more runs on the board and suddenly it was 11-1.
Burdick’s homer to left in the eighth provided additional insurance before the Pirates generated two runs to end the scoring at 12-8.
Utah State will take on this same Wright State team Sunday morning at 10 o'clock. Then ECU loads up for game three of the Pirates' weekend when they take on Western Carolina to close out the KLC with the first pitch scheduled for 1:30.
