The Royals earned a much-needed ODAC sweep Saturday afternoon at Guilford, both times using late-inning heroics to improve to 6-9 in the conference.
Eastern Mennonite sits just behind Randolph-Macon and Roanoke, who are tied for fifth in the ODAC standings at 7-5. Hampden-Sydney is seventh at 6-6. (EMU and Guilford were the only conference teams to play on Saturday, with poor weather moving the rest of the ODAC’s games to Sunday.) Only the top six teams make the postseason tournament.
The men have non-conference games during the upcoming week, hosting Ferrum Tuesday and traveling to Hood Wednesday, before hosting the ODAC’s 10th-place team, Lynchburg, next Saturday.
EMU 7, Guilford 2
The Quakers scored first, turning a leadoff walk in the second to a 1-0 lead.
Dean Lowery pushed the men ahead with a two-run single in the fourth. The then Royals bumped the lead to 3-1 in the seventh, triggered by Kyle Armstrong (Greenville, Va./Riverheads) leading off with a single and moving to third on a wild throw on a pickoff attempt. Adam Marston (Woodstock, Va./Miller School) later singled him in.
GC’s back-to-back singles to start the eighth resulted in an early move to closer Joe Hall (Gladys, Va./Rustburg). One of the runners came in on a sacrifice fly before Hall stranded two Quakers to hold the lead.
The men got some insurance in the ninth. Griffin Stanley (Roanoke, Va./Cave Spring) led off with a triple and Zach Roberts (Stuarts Draft, Va./Riverheads) followed by drawing a walk. The Royals botched a squeeze play, but the Quakers returned the favor by missing the tag on Stanley in the resulting rundown, allowing Roberts to move up to second. Kyle Salladay (Chesapeake, Va./Grassfield) quickly cashed in on the mistake by shooting the next pitch up the middle and both runners came home. Salladay eventually scored on a groundout and David Meehan (Virginia Beach, Va./Salem) added a two-out RBI single for the fourth run of the frame.
Hall allowed just a single in Guilford’s last chance for the two-inning save.
The offense earned 11 hits and seven walks, as each starter reached base safely at least once. Armstrong was 2-3 with a walk, scoring twice. Meehan was 2-4 with a walk and RBI, while Marston also had a pair of singles and RBI.
Armstrong also pitched 7.0 strong innings, giving up just one run to improve to 3-2. Hall got his fifth save, tied for second in the ODAC.
EMU 6, Guilford 5 – 12 innings
The second game proved to be even more dramatic than the first. Not only did the nightcap go into extra innings, but all 11 of the runs scored during the affair came across with two outs.
Roberts gave EMU the first lead with an RBI double in the third. After Guilford jumped ahead with a pair of unearned runs in the fourth, Roberts brought home two unearned runs with a two-out single in the fifth. Patrick Love (Bedford, Va./Staunton River) laced a two-run double in the sixth, pushing the lead to 5-2.
The Quakers struck back quickly with four hits in the bottom of the frame, touching home three times to knot things up at 5-5.
After the scoring outburst, neither team dented home again until six innings later. During that spell Guilford had the best scoring chances, loading the bases with no one out in the eighth before putting runners on second and third in the ninth. The Royals, meanwhile, couldn’t get a runner past second base.
Until the 12th.
Roberts led off the frame with an infield single and moved to second on a sacrifice from Salladay. After taking third on a groundout, the freshman raced the 90 feet to home on a wild pitch. The Royals ended up getting two more hits in the inning, but had to settle for the one-run lead.
Jimmy Miller (Port Republic, Va./Spotswood), who had taken over on the mound the previous inning, left a little drama by giving up a two-out single. But he worked a great at-bat to close the game on a strikeout looking.
Roberts was the offensive hero of the game, accounting for four of EMU’s six scores. He batted 4-6 with three RBIs while notching the game-winning run. Ryan Hedrick was also 4-6. Love finished 2-4 with two RBIs and a run.
After getting the save in the opener, Hall pitched three scoreless innings to get the men into extra innings. Miller threw the final two frames scorelessly for his first win.
It was the first extra-inning game of the year for Eastern Mennonite.