KALAMAZOO, Mich. – The Western Michigan baseball team won its series from Ohio, beating the Bobcats 9-0 in the series finale on Saturday. The resilient victory came 30 minutes after the Broncos had to finish game two of the series on Saturday morning which was halted due to darkness.
Jimmy Chase had a masterful performance to help preserve the Broncos' bullpen which used 10 pitchers in game two on Friday and Saturday. Chase threw 117 pitches of shutout ball over 7.0 innings. He struck out six and walked just three while scattering six hits along the way.
Chase got help from his offense in the first inning as the first four Broncos all reached base via singles.
Tanner Allison had the biggest hit of the inning, coming up with the bases loaded and hitting one through the right side to bring home
Connor Smith and
Nick Vogelmeier. Two batters later,
Grant Miller scored on a Jesse Forstell single through the left side.
The Broncos put up a single tally in the third and fourth and broke the game open in the seventh.
Tyler Frank first drove in
Alex Goodwin from second on a single up the middle and went to third on
Andrew Stones double down the left field line. Vogelmeier brought in both men singling to center, to make the score 8-0 in favor of WMU.
The game three victory helped overcome a wild one on Friday and Saturday which saw the Bobcats win 17-13. The game took four hours and forty minutes to play, aside from the 14 hour delay caused by darkness.
During play, the Broncos responded from a 5-1 deficit in the fourth, scoring eleven runs combined in the fourth and fifth innings to take a 12-5 lead of their own. In the bottom of the fifth, WMU had seven straight seeing eye singles, as they totaled six runs in the inning after scoring five in the bottom of the fourth.
Unfortunately, Ohio was able to get to the Bronco bullpen and respond with 12 unanswered runs of its own, punctuated by a two-run home run in the top of the seventh to tie the game. From there the Bobcats would score five more to win the slugfest 17-13.
Overall for the three-game series, Miller stood out, going 7-for-12 with two doubles and two RBI. He also drew four walks for an on-base percentage of .688. He was one of eight Broncos to hit .385 or better on the weekend. Allison finished the three-game set with a team-best six RBI.
Next up, Western Michigan will host Oakland at 3:00 on Tuesday at Hyames Field.
