Game 1 Box Score /
Game 2 Box Score /
GameDay Online
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University baseball team picked up its first two Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victories Tuesday afternoon.
But it was anything but easy.
In fact, the Cardinals' performance against Hamline probably put a few premature gray hairs on the head of coach
Nick Whaley.
The Cardinals, coming off back-to-back games in which they plated seven and eight runs — and lost both ends of a conference doubleheader against Macalester Saturday — failed to score until the ninth inning of their opener against Hamline, then scored the game-winning run on a one-out,
David Krieger (Mendota Heights, Minn.) single in the top of the 10th to beat the Pipers 2-1 in the opener at Midway Stadium.
And, if Whaley had chewed his fingernails to the nubs during that performance, he certainly did during Game 2, as the Cardinals rallied from a 4-3 deficit with two runs in the top of the fifth inning to complete the sweep with a 5-4 win.
"Offensively, we were very good (last Saturday) against Macalester, but we didn't get the pitching we needed," said Whaley of Saturday's 8-7 and 12-8 losses to the Scots. "Today, our bats were a little quiet, but our pitchers were outstanding."
Outstanding? That just might be an understatement.
Gary Seifert (Prescott, Wis.) and
Willy Shetka (West St. Paul, Minn.) were virtually untouchable in the first game, as Seifert tossed 4.1 innings of four-hit ball, and Shetka came on to allow just three hits and a ninth-inning run in 5.2 innings to earn the win.
And in the nightcap, three SMU pitchers limited the Pipers to just three runs on eight hits — no runs and just three hits after one was out in the third inning – to help the Cardinals to their first sweep of the season.
With Seifert and Shetka — not to mention the Pipers' Josh Roiger — throwing goose-eggs through eight innings, the Cardinals finally got on the board in the top of the ninth on a sacrifice fly by
Brandon Haugh (Easton, Minn.) that scored
Kevin Black (Mahtomedi, Minn.) from third. The Pipers answered with a run of their own in the bottom of the ninth, but SMU regained the lead in the 10th as
Chris Bogie (St. Paul, Minn.) singled, was sacrificed to second and scored in Krieger's RBI single.
The Cardinals raced out to a 2-0 lead in the second — thanks to RBI singles by Arron Mechlewitz
(Winona, Minn.) and Black — but Hamline responded with a single run in the second and three more in the third to grab a 4-3 advantage. An advantage that lasted less than two innings, as SMU plated a pair of fifth-inning runs — one on a sacrifice fly from
Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) and the other on an RBI infield single from
Robbie Johnson (
Lake Elmo, Minn.) — to take the lead for good.
"It was a great day of baseball," said Whaley, whose team — 2-4 in the MIAC and 5-10 overall — returns to action Saturday, playing host to Carleton in an MIAC doubleheader at Winona State's Loughery Field. "It was a little nerve-wracking, but it was a lot of fun, too.
"We put together two very good performances and, fortunately, we were able to come away with two wins for our efforts."
