Box Score 1 |
Box Score 2 Due to lots of snow and cold temperatures, the Wayland Baptist baseball team had to wait eight days to play its first Sooner Athletic Conference games of the season. So far, the wait's been worth it, due to lots of good pitching.
Tyler Adams and
Taylor Bridges threw a couple of complete-game, five-hit gems Saturday as the Pioneers prevailed in the first two contests of their conference-opening series against Southwestern Assemblies of God, 10-0 and 2-1.
In the opener at Wilder Field, Adams (4-0) threw a five-hit shutout as the junior right-hander from Show Low Ariz., earned his fourth win in as many decisions. Adams, who retired the first nine batters he faced and allowed just one SAGU baserunner past second, walked one and surrendered just five singles.
Adams got all the offensive support he needed when Wayland lead-off batter
Will Bass doubled in the bottom of the first, went to third on
Aaron Vallance's bunt single, and scored on
Gaby De La Cruz's groundout. The Pioneers picked up an unearned run on the first of SAGU's four costly errors to make it 2-0, then added five more unearned runs in the second.
The big blow that inning came on a two-out, bases-clearing triple to right-center by De La Cruz, who later scored on
Ernesto Lizardi's single up the middle.
Brayden Blackwell got things rolling with an RBI-single to score
Dillan Vigil, who reached on an error by the SAGU second baseman.
Wayland put up three more runs in the sixth, both via home runs to left field. The first was a towering two-run blast by
Josh Alexander, his third of the season, before Lizardi also recorded his third on a solo shot.
The Pioneers ended with 11 hits - three by Vallance who also scored three times, three by Lizardi, and two by Bass.
Wayland had to work a bit harder in game two, although Bridges (2-1) made it look easy on the mound. The sophomore southpaw from Lubbock struck out five while walking none to help the Pioneer offense, which made the most of its two hits.
Like Adams, Bridges also gave up only five singles, three of them in the second inning when the Lions scored their only run of the day. Bridges faced the minimum batters the next four innings, with Wayland turning a nifty 5-4-3 double-play to retire the lone base runner in that stretch.
Wayland scored its first run of the game in the third when
Austin Davis was hit by a pitch, went to second on a balk then scored on Vallance's two-out single up the middle.
The Pioneers pushed the winning run across in the fifth after Vigil reached on an inning-opening error by the SAGU shortstop. Blackwell's sacrifice bunt moved Vigil to second where Bass' RBI-double to left-center scored him.
SAGU made a bit of a rally in the top of the seventh with a one-out single before a wild pitch got the runner to second. But Bridges struck out the next Lion batsman then got the final out on a fly to right-fielder
Josh Alexander.
Winners of six straight, Wayland (12-8, 2-0 SAC) will try to make it seven in a row when the Pioneers host the Lions (7-16, 0-4) at 2 p.m. Sunday. The series was pushed back a day due to excessive snow, which also postponed Wayland's series against No. 16 Oklahoma City a week ago. That series has yet to be rescheduled.
