Oliver drives in five RBIs, but errors and walks cost CMU in 14-8 loss to Oakland
Central Michigan baseball team took advantage of six Michigan State errors in their win Tuesday.
Oakland took advantage of CMU’s six errors and 10 walks in their 14-8 victory Wednesday.
Through the first four innings, freshman right-handed pitcherBlake Hibbitts struggled with his control through three innings, allowing two earned runs, three walks and six hits before being taken out of the game in the fourth inning.
CMU head coach Steve Jaksa said the redshirt freshman has shown some improvement in his second career start with his change-ups to left-handed hitters, but he still has to improve his fastball command and his breaking ball consistency.
“There’s some things that he has to do to continue to get better. Obviously, we’d like him to progress a little bit quicker than he is,” Jaksa said. “Once he gets to where he commands his fastball a little bit better and throws the ball down, he’s going to get a lot of ground balls. When the ball’s up, he gets hurt a little bit. He doesn’t have the kind of command with his fastball yet that he would want.”
CMU would come within one run of Oakland in the fourth inning when sophomore shortstop Oliver Morgan hit a 3-run homerun, making the score 4-3.
Morgan would later on rip one over the glove of Oakland third baseman Ian Yetsko to cap off a four-run rally in the seventh inning, making the score 7-4.
Oakland would answer with a six-run rally in the eighth inning, started by fielding errors by senior relief pitcher Kenton San Miguel and Morgan’s second error of the game. Those runners who reached on errors would score on a Yetsko single. Oakland catcher Jake Morton would make the score 10-7 on a 3-run double later in the inning to take the lead for the rest of the game.
“When you look at the (scoreboard) and you make six errors, that’s not a good feeling,” Jaksa said. “For us to turn and do that after a 7-4 lead is really disappointing. It’s hard to swallow, actually. We thought we were in a good place and had our bullpen set up the way we wanted to down the stretch, and we just couldn’t field the ball well enough and make good enough pitches to get the job done at the end of the day."
CMU will be on the road starting on Friday to play Bowling Green throughout the weekend.
