Chippewas win season's final series, will be sixth seed in MAC Tournament
Central Michigan: 3 | Western Michigan: 1
Several scenarios had to occur in order for the Central Michigan baseball team to have the fifth seed in next week’s Mid-American Conference Tournament. CMU needed a win and a Toledo loss on Saturday — only one of those things happened.
CMU (21-35, 12-12 MAC), defeated the Broncos (18-30, 11-13 MAC) 3-1 in the regular season finale at Theunissen Stadium. The Toledo Rockets defeated the Eastern Michigan Eagles 14-2 in Toledo. The Chippewas acquired the sixth seed in the tournament, while the Rockets snagged the fifth seed.
CMU will play Miami (Ohio) in the first round of the MAC Tournament on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. in Avon, Ohio. CMU won two-of-three against the RedHawks at home last weekend.
"We won't do anything different," said Head Coach Steve Jaksa. "We're gonna play the same style of baseball that we've been playing. It's not a three-game series, it's one game against Miami and then we'll move on to somebody else."
Jaksa also mentioned that senior pitcher Sean Renzi will start on Wednesday.
With a 21-35 record, CMU finishes the regular season under .500 for the first time since 2013.
The Chippewas scored a run in the second inning, but the game-changing hit came off the bat of junior catcher Robert Greenman.
With two outs, Greenman hit a two-RBI double to left-center field. He tried to make it a triple, but was thrown out at third. It was the second straight game Greenman recorded a two-RBI double in an important situation.
"We got some key hits, Robert got a big key hit to get us the two runs," Jaksa said. "You gotta get a two-out knock. We got a lot of them yesterday, we got a couple of them today and enough with our pitching and defense to get us a win."
CMU starting pitcher, freshman Pat Leatherman went 5 2/3 innings on Saturday, giving up one run on five hits and zero walks. He struck out five batters while throwing 64 pitches.
"(Leatherman) did better than we expected," Jaksa said. "He always competes; I don't have to worry about that, but we were only hoping to get five innings out of him because he was on a pitch count. All the starting pitchers were on a pitch count. We want them ready for the conference tournament."
WMU scored its first run of the game and knocked Leatherman out of the game at the same time after an RBI-double with two outs in the sixth inning.
Freshman pitcher Michael Brettell came on in relief for Leatherman. He went 2 1/3 innings, giving up just one hit.
Senior pitcher and third baseman Morgan Oliver closed out the ninth inning for CMU. He allowed two base runners but was able to secure the series victory against the rival Broncos.
