ST. LOUIS – The University of Missouri-St. Louis baseball team extended its winning streak to three with a doubleheader sweep against Lincoln, 11-0 and 1-0 at the UMSL Baseball Field on Saturday afternoon. The Tritons improve to 26-19, 20-7 GLVC while the Blue Tigers are 6-37, 0-27 GLVC.
With the two wins on Saturday and Maryville and Missouri S&T splitting its doubleheader, UMSL moves into sole possession of second place in the GLVC Baseball standings and is one-game behind the Miners for the top spot in the conference.
Game 1: UMSL 11 Lincoln 0
The Tritons capitalized on an error by Blythe Blakey with two outs in the first that led to six runs.
Justin Simard hit a grounder to Blakey which should have ended the inning but the miscue went down the left field line allowing
Justin Terhaar and
Owen Faith to score the first two runs of the game.
Luke Saxton followed with a double down the left field line to make it 3-0 and then
Brandon Johnson delivered the big blow in the inning lining a single into left center on a 3-2 pitch that scored Saxton,
Cade Grevengoed and
Noah Tomaras.
Simard had an RBI single in the second scoring
Mitch Bonczkowski with the seventh run of the contest. Terhaar added a two-run single in the third. Johnson hit a sacrifice fly to right in the sixth scoring Grevengoed and
Cooper Blythe added an RBI double to right center.
That was all the run support
Eli Cartwright needed as he struck out nine Lincoln hitters and allowed one hit in his five innings pitched to improve to 7-3 on the season.
Trey Schneider wrapped it up pitching two scoreless innings.
UMSL had nine hits in the contest and was led by Tomaras with three while Terhaar added two more.
Game 2: UMSL 1 Lincoln 0
The Blue Tigers had a chance to get on the board first in game two as Easton Stuckenschneider tried to score on a base hit to right but Faith made a strong throw to the plate to retire Stuckenschneider to end the inning.
Lincoln had another chance in the third. Jacob Schulte led off the inning with a single to left. After a fly out to right, Andy Srebroski IV hit a single to right. Faith's throw went to third but Simard alertly came off the back and threw to second to retire Srebroski as he tried to advance to second on the throw.
Bryce Nicolay kept it scoreless retiring Stuckenschneider on a ground ball to third as Simard made another great play to take a hit away.
The lone run of the contest came in the fifth. Grevengoed hit a line drive off the top of the fence in left that missed a home run by a foot for a one-out double. He scored on Johnson's RBI single down the left field line.
Dustin Hagens came on relief to start the sixth inning and retired all six hitters he faced to nail down the victory for Nicolay.
Nicolay went five innings giving up no runs on six hits with two strikeouts to even his record at 5-5 while Hagens had two strikeouts to earn his sixth save of the season.
Johnson had two of UMSL's four hits in the contest while Bonczkowski and Grevengoed had a hit each.
The Tritons and Blue Tigers conclude their four-game series on Sunday with a single game starting at noon at the UMSL Baseball Field.
