WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University baseball team took the field Wednesday afternoon at Max Molock Field in dire need of an offensive jump-start.
Bethel pitchers Marcus Krupka and Max Sutter, however, were having nothing of it.
Krupka limited Saint Mary's to eight hits — from seven different players — and a pair of second-inning runs in leading BU to an 11-2 win in the opener, while Sutter allowed just one run on four hits over eight innings in the Royals' second straight 11-2 victory in the nightcap.
GAME 1: NO ANSWER FOR BU'S OFFENSIVE ATTACK
In the blink of an eye, the Cardinals found themselves staring at a three-run deficit, as Bethel tags SMU starter
Andrew Fischer (La Crosse, Wis.) for three runs on four hits in its first at-bat.
Saint Mary's needed an inning to "warm up," before stringing together four hits — including RBI singles by
Tanner Bauman (Willmar, Minn.) and
Brandon Merfeld (La Crosse, Wis.) — in the second inning to trim the Royal lead to one, 3-2.
Unfortunately, the one-run deficit quickly ballooned to nine — thanks to a four-run Royal third, a three-run fourth and a one-run fifth — that pushed BU's advantage to 10-2.
Saint Mary's had its best opportunity to chip away at that Bethel lead in the bottom of the fifth, loading the bases on back-to-back-to-back two-out singles by
Cameron Weber (Holmen, Wis.),
Riley Bauman (Stratford, Wis.), and
Mason Coyle (Madison, Wis.), but BU starter Marcus Krupke induced a groundout to third to foil the threat.
Merfeld led the Cardinals' eight-hit offensive attack, going 2-for-4 with an RBI, while Weber, Coyle,
Riley Bauman,
Trevon VanEgtern (La Crosse, Wis.), and
Patrick Schork (Janesville, Wis.) accounted for SMU's other six hits.
GAME 2: NEW GAME, SAME OUTCOME
The Cardinals did something few have been able to do against Sutter — score a run.
Sutter entered the game sporting a microscopic 0.88 ERA, surrendering just three runs in three straight complete-game efforts — and the Cardinals promptly jumped on the sophomore right-hander for a solo run in the bottom of the second inning on Coyle's team-leading fourth home run of the season.
The Royals answered with six runs in the top of the third, including a home run of their own — a three-run bomb by Justin Winterfeldt — to take the lead for good, 6-1.
And Bethel wasn't finished.
BU plated three more runs in the fourth, scoring on a wild pitch and a two-run double off the bat of Ty Koehn, and added a single run in the sixth, before both teams recorded solo runs in the ninth — SMU's coming on a
Jaxon Vance RBI infield single — to round out the scoring.
The Cardinals (2-6 MIAC, 6-14 overall) are back in action on Friday, heading to Macalester's Nicholson Field in St. Paul, Minn., for a 2:30 p.m. conference doubleheader against the Scots.
