EDINBURG, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi baseball team could not secure the series victory in the second of three games against UTRGV on Saturday evening, going cold at the plate and falling by a final score of 5-1.
Just a day after tallying a whopping 17 hits in their win in the opening game of the series, the Islanders (12-14, 2-8 SLC) had a bit more trouble against the pitching of the Vaqueros (14-13, 9-5 SLC), not getting their first runner on the basepaths until the top of the fourth and failing to record a knock of any kind until there were two outs in the sixth. Even with these struggles, though, they still managed to get traffic into scoring position in both of these innings, but they could not capitalize on either situation to pick up their first run of the night.
With the lineup running cold to start, A&M-Corpus Christi leaned on senior
Luke Singleton to keep the team in the game, and he did just that early in his outing by shaking off a run in the opening frame and retiring eight of the next nine hitters that came to the plate. The lefty did run into some trouble in the fourth thanks in part to a one-out error in the field that allowed two unearned runs to come across the plate later, but he still managed to finish four complete innings, surrendering just one earned run on two hits while punching out three.
After the tough start, the Islanders finally managed to get on the board in the seventh, doing so by getting the bats going from the start of the inning. Redshirt junior
Jarrett Flaggert and senior
Christian Smith-Johnson got the offense started with a pair of infield singles, and after a wild pitch advanced both of them up 90 feet, junior
Max Towchik came off the bench and did his job by bringing in Flaggert with an RBI groundout and moving Smith-Johnson up to third. Graduate
Austin Russell followed this up with a walk and a stolen base to bring the tying run into scoring position, but the visitors were unable to take advantage, stranding both with a strikeout to end the best threat of the night.
The Islanders would go on to regret this missed chance later, as UTRGV made them pay with a two-run home run in the eighth inning that put them right back down by four runs once again. Needing an even bigger rally than the one before, they managed to put a runner on second but nothing more, going scoreless in their last ups and being handed the defeat as a result.
After seeing six different players record multi-hit games in the opener, A&M-Corpus Christi got just one on Saturday, which came from Flaggert with his two singles in the seventh and ninth. The other knocks on the day belonged to Smith-Johnson and graduate
Cade Sanchez, with the latter notching the first of the day in the sixth to extend his current hitting streak up to 14 games.
The Islanders will now wrap up the weekend in the Valley with the finale on Sunday, returning to action at 1 p.m. to take their second chance at earning the series victory.
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