Game 1 Box Score /
Game 2 Box Score /
Nick's Notebook /
GameDay Online
FORT MYERS, Fla. — — After getting a steady diet of left-handed pitching in their
8-3 exhibition loss to the Minnesota Twins Rookie Team on Monday, right-handed pitching was the blue-plate special when the Cardinals took the field Tuesday against Amherst.
And for seven innings, the Cardinals feasted, scoring a season-high nine runs in rolling to a 9-6 Game 1 victory over the Jeffs.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the kitchen closed early in the nightcap, as a pair of Amherst righties limited SMU to just two hits in earning a split with an 11-3 victory.
“Today was a great example of what the game of baseball is all about,” said SMU coach
Nick Whaley, whose team is back in action on Wednesday, taking on Scranton in a nonconference twinbill scheduled for 10 a.m. eastern time. “There were challenges to be overcome, there were plays we made and plays we didn't make.
“It was baseball at its best.”
And, at times, its worst.
“Offensively, we did a great job of putting the bat on the ball and got solid pitching,” said Whaley, whose team belted out 10 Game 1 hits — including two each from
Kyle Ryan (St. Paul, Minn.)and
Brandon Haugh (Easton, Minn.) — and got five innings of four-hit, two-run ball from
Matt Wilgenbusch (Rickardsville, Iowa). “But we didn't get that same type of performance in the second game. We struggled to get the ball around the plate and we didn't get the bats started up the way we need to.
“that was the difference in a split and a sweep.”
The Cardinals jumped out to a 2-0, first-inning lead in the opener, only to have Amherst answer with two runs in the top of the second to tie things up at 2-2. SMU got an RBI single from Ryan in the third, then pushed the lead to 7-2 with four runs in the fourth – highlighted by an RBI single off the bat of
David Krieger (Mendota Heights, Minn.) and a two-run single from
Brady Knudsen (Racine, Wis.).
Amherst cut the gap to one, 7-6 with four runs in the top of the sixth, but the Cardinals got two back in their half of the inning on back-to-back RBI singles from Knudsen and Haugh to ice the victory.
The hits were few and far between for SMU in the nightcap, as the Cardinals managed just a first-pitch, first-inning lead-off single from
Kevin Black (Mahtomedi, Minn.) and a two-out, two-run single from Haugh in the fifth.
Amherst, meanwhile, scored two in the first, one in the second, one in the fourth, three in the fifth, and four in the sixth off a pair of Cardinals pitchers to secure the split.
“It's hard to be too disappointed (with the split,” admitted Whaley. “We never let the game get away from us, we battled from start to finish, and after five hours of baseball, we are a better team now than we were when we stepped on the field (at 1 p.m.)
“And that's our goal down here — to get better every single day.”
