Cornell’s baseball team picked up a crucial win in Sunday’s Midwest Conference series finale with Chicago, outslugging the Maroons 14-10 in Game 2 at Ash Park Field.
Chicago claimed the opening game, 4-2, spoiling a spectacular relief outing from Cornell senior left-hander Daulton Montagna who retired 21 consecutive batters to end the game.
The Maroons took two of three games from the Rams over the weekend and inched into third place in the MWC race at 10-8. Cornell is among three teams bunched closely behind with eight league losses and two weeks left in the regular season.
Darren Mancke put a cap on Cornell’s Game 2 outburst with a three-run inside-the-park home run. The junior deposited a deep drive off the fence in straight-away center field and motored all the way around to put the Rams ahead 14-10 in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Mancke finished 2-for-4 with three RBIs, after having an impressive 26-game on-base streak snapped in the opener.
The Rams unloaded for 17 total hits in the nightcap and also took advantage of eight Chicago errors. Seth Beals went 3-for-5 and drove in three runs for his team-high ninth multi-RBI game of the season. Josiah Shaw and Colin Konicek also tallied three hits apiece and both scored three times.
In Game 1, the Maroons grabbed an early 4-0 lead and then were totally blanked by Montagna, who came on with nobody out in the top of the third. The first three Maroons reached base against Montagna, but none after that.
Montagna recorded 21 consecutive outs, including a season-best 11 strikeouts.
The Rams were limited to five hits in the contest, led by a 2-for-4 effort from Zipperer.
Earlier in the week, the Rams lost 10-1 against Chicago earlier in the series, won 12-2 and lost 4-2 against Monmouth, and had a 15-5 win over Knox.
Against Chicago, Montagna was locked in a pitching battle with Chicago’s Drew Bryan, neither allowing an earned run through five innings with the score tied at 1-1. Chicago pulled ahead with a two-out RBI single in the sixth and added a pair of two-out runs in the seventh.
Montagna scattered nine hits and yielded only two earned runs over seven frames.
Bryan earned the victory, holding the Rams to four hits and striking out 10 in seven innings. The junior right-hander retired the final 13 batters he faced.
Kent recorded two hits, stole two bases and delivered flashy plays in the field to keep the game close in the early going.
Against Monmouth, after exploding for a season-best 21 hits in the opener, the Rams’ batting lineup was bottled up for most of Game 2 and Monmouth hung on late to take the nightcap, 4-2.
Hinrichsen (5-1) logged his seventh consecutive start of at least six innings, limiting the Fighting Scots (10-18 overall, 5-11 MWC) to four hits and a pair of runs while striking out eight. The dominant senior right-hander vaulted to No. 2 on the program’s single-season strikeouts list with 72, one more than he recorded last spring.
Hinrichsen struck out the final batter he faced with the bases loaded to end the sixth inning. He is now three strikeouts shy of Cornell’s season record, set by Ryan Rosenberg in 2004.
Against Knox, Cornell cracked a season-high 18 hits and cruised to a 15-5 Midwest Conference baseball win in eight innings over Knox Monday at Ash Park Field.
The Rams had nine players register a hit and scored nine-plus runs for the eighth time this spring. Kale Rose, named MWC Position Player of the Week earlier in the day, went 3-for-4 with three runs and reached base four times. The sophomore is batting .538 over a current six-game hot stretch.
Mancke went 3-for-6 at the plate, extending his on-base streak to 23 games. Kent also collected three hits, including a game-ending two-run single in the bottom of the eighth. Kent recorded two of Cornell’s six doubles in the game.