Baseball loses to Akron Friday
Senior Zach Cooper pitched a solid five innings for the Central Michigan baseball team in its series opener at Akron Friday.
Unfortunately for CMU, he threw six innings, allowing seven runs on seven hits and striking out eight as the Chippewas (18-25, 7-9 MAC) dropped game one to the Zips (17-26, 10-6 MAC) 7-0.
“What we need was to settle down in that first inning it was really an unfortunate inning,” head coach Steve Jaksa said. “(Pat) MacKenzie got screened by the umpire and didn’t see where the ball went then a routine ground ball to short hit something in the dirt and shot over (Jordan) Dean’s head.”
CMU hit, but left 10 runners on base.
“We had two guys on base in the first, second and third innings with two outs and if we could’ve just got get a two out single we could’ve fought back in the game,” Jaksa said. “We just couldn’t come up with that one hit.”
Redshirt freshman second baseman Pat MacKenzie continued his hot hitting batting three-for-four on the day coming after a four RBI day at Notre Dame in a Chippewa victory.
“Mac(Kenzie) has had a great attitude and not thinking about anything but getting a ball to hit,” Jaksa said. “Just trying to keep the game simple.”
Freshman Sean Renzi came in relief of Cooper in the seventh inning and pitched two hitless innings and struck out two batters as the bullpen continues to improve through the season.
“Renzi was fine and he’s getting better and better every time he goes out there,” Jaksa said.
The loss hurts but CMU knows all too well it’s not out of the series after taking game one last weekend with Kent State before dropping the next two.
“It’s tough to say (what we need to do to turn around the series) it’s always something different,” Jaksa said.
Junior Pat Kaminska gets the start on Saturday with the game set to start at 1 p.m. in Akron.
