Box Score NACOGDOCHES, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team emerged victorious in its wildest game of the season to date on Sunday evening, taking down Stephen F. Austin in a marathon 16-inning affair by a final score of 8-5.
With the win, the Islanders (12-21, 4-10 SLC) clinched their first conference series victory of the season, doing so against the Lumberjacks (9-22, 2-12 SLC) after previously falling to Nicholls, Northwestern State, Lamar and UTRGV. They also nearly broke the record for the longest game in program history while doing so, coming up just short of the previous high mark of 17 innings set against Troy all the way back on February 10, 2006.
Long before the craziness of the later innings, the first act to Sunday's game saw the two opposing starters come out of the gates in control of things, with senior
David Dean battling with SFA's Dylan Mulcahy from the outset. Through the first five innings, Dean had just a lone hiccup in the form of an RBI double in the second, but the lefty otherwise kept the Lumberjacks in check by preventing them from cashing in on a few early scoring opportunities. On the other side, however, Mulcahy started out even stronger in the same time frame, holding A&M-Corpus Christi off the scoreboard entirely after working around five hits and two walks by stranding runners in scoring position in each of the first, second and fifth innings.
The first breakthrough for the Islanders against Mulcahy arrived in the top of the sixth, and it came on one big swing of the bat by sophomore
Jarrett Flaggert. After a one-out single by senior
Isaac Webb put another runner on the basepaths, Flaggert took a full-count pitch and blasted it over the wall for a two-run home run, a go-ahead shot that chased Mulcahy from the game. Unfortunately for the visitors, though, the Lumberjacks would answer back in nearly identical fashion, as in the bottom half of the frame, third baseman Julian Swift would smash a solo home run of his own that ended Dean's outing and tied the game up at two apiece. SFA would end up taking the lead after this as well, jumping on reliever
Tristan Crane for an RBI single with two outs to go back ahead 3-2.
This would end up being the start of the roller coaster ride that would last the rest of the night, with the next instance coming once the eighth inning rolled around. First up was another rally from the Islanders, which started when after senior
Cade Sanchez, Flaggert and senior
Stephen Hom reached on a double, a single and a walk respectively, junior
Christian Smith-Johnson cashed in by lining a base hit through the left side to bring in Sanchez and level up the score once again. Walks by both senior
Logan Vaughan and senior
Austin Russell with the bases loaded right after would put A&M-Corpus Christi back up by two, but like before, this advantage would not hold for long, as the Lumberjacks again responded with an RBI single and a successful squeeze bunt to knot things up at five.
From here, the two pitching staffs would bear down and put in their best work with the game on the line, trading zeroes at both the end of regulation and well into extra innings. The Islanders did this with a trio of arms out of their bullpen, starting with junior
Luke Singleton, who shook off the pair of runs he gave up in the eighth and worked into the 10
th without allowing any more. Junior
Preston Watkins was the next man up and came up incredibly big, stranding the winning run on second base in relief of Singleton before then working unscathed through the 11
th and 12
th while striking out the side in the latter. Finally, senior
Cam Soliz entered after Watkins and pitched just as well, retiring all nine hitters he faced between the 13
th and 15
th frames.
This excellent work by the bullpen kept the Islanders in the game despite going cold at the plate in extras, and because of it, they finally managed to get back on the board with one last outburst in the top of the 16
th. Webb got things started with a one-out double into the right-center gap, and as the very next hitter, Flaggert lifted a fly ball out to right field that turned into a go-ahead triple after the SFA right fielder lost his footing while tracking the ball back to the warning track. A&M-Corpus Christi would then go on to tack on some vital insurance runs on top of this, adding two more to the ledger on a perfectly executed squeeze bunt by senior
Mario Mendoza Jr. and an RBI single off the bat of Vaughan. In the bottom half of the frame, Soliz manage to slam the door shut, finishing his fourth scoreless inning by inducing a groundball that Russell made an excellent scoop of at first base to end the game after more than five and a half hours.
Individually, Flaggert was the leader of the pack for the Islanders, coming through in the clutch in two separate situations and finishing his day with four hits in eight at-bats while driving in three runs and scoring three of his own. Five other players recorded multi-hit performances en route to 20 on the day for the team in total, starting with three knocks apiece from both Webb and Smith-Johnson in their seven plate appearances. Rounding out the scoresheet with two hits each were Russell, Sanchez and senior
Drake Kerr, with Russell also reaching base two other times via a pair of free passes.
The Islanders will now have a quick turnaround to the series finale against the Lumberjacks, coming right back to the field on Monday at 12 p.m. looking to secure the series sweep.
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