Michigan snaps baseball's four-game winning streak
Another big offensive inning by an opposing team on the road proved to be costly for the Central Michigan baseball team Wednesday.
A six-run third inning allowed Big Ten opponent Michigan to take a commanding lead early and defeat CMU 13-7 at the Wilpon Complex in Ann Arbor, derailing the Chippewas’ four-game winning streak.
Taking the loss was junior right-hander Bryce Morrow (1-1), who allowed eight earned runs on 14 hits in 3 1/3 innings pitched.
“I don’t think it was a difficult start, but it was difficult ending,” said coach Steve Jaksa. “I thought he started off quite well but his ball flattened out in the second and third inning. The more pitches you have to throw in an inning, the worse it gets.”
Michigan (16-10) took a 1-0 lead in the second inning after a throwing error by freshman second baseman Jordan Dean. CMU responded with a run of its own in the third inning on a sacrifice fly from junior Brendan Emmett, but that was as close as the Chippewas would get.
The Wolverines exploded for seven hits in the bottom of the third, including three consecutive to start the inning, and capitalized off a wild pitch by Morrow to score six runs and take a 7-1 lead.
CMU (15-11) tried to respond by scoring two runs in the fourth, but U-M matched it with two runs of its own in the same inning. The Wolverines added two more in the fifth and seventh innings, respectively, to extend their lead to 13-5 and put the game out of reach.
“We just have to do a little bit better job of getting into double digits on the offensive side,” Jaksa said. “When you play four or five games a week, sometimes it’s hard to get the match ups you want all the time. The six runs certainly bumps up (their score) but they also scored seven other runs scattered in the rest of the game. If we kept them to all zeros for the other six (innings), we would’ve been OK.”
Senior Billy Anderson went 4-for-4 with a walk and RBI. Junior Matt Faiman finished 1-for-4 with two RBIs.
CMU returns to Mid-American Conference play this weekend with a three-game series against Akron at Theunissen Stadium.
