TUCSON, Ariz. – The Concordia Golden Bears baseball team (1-2) dropped their opener in the Tucson Invitational to #10 Azusa Pacific (11-1) by a score of 14-6 on Thursday night.
It was a contest that featured a lot of offense with the two teams combining for 20 runs on 24 hits as the Golden Bears cut an eight run deficit down to three before APU pulled away late.
CSP had 22 position players and five pitchers play in the game as 27 Golden Bears made appearances in the loss. Eight different hitters registered hits, led by two from
Carter Schmidt and
Steven Nessler each.
Zach Elder added the lone long ball for the team as he hit his second of the season.
Keanu Mendez (0-1) took the loss for Concordia as he worked three innings in the start.
Ray Wellner followed with four solid innings in his debut out of the bullpen with five strikeouts and two earned runs allowed.
Erick Kivi,
Louie Varland and
Patrick Courtney all made appearances out of the bullpen as well.
Michael Fairchild (3-0), who entered the night with an 0.47 ERA in three appearances, got the win for APU despite being knocked around for five runs in his six innings of work. Hayden Jorgenson added the three-inning save as he pitched three perfect innings.
The Cougars put the Golden Bears in an early hole as they scored in each of the first four innings, including two in the first and three in the third to jump ahead 7-0.
APU manufactured some offense in the first with two runs on just one hit, utilizing a pair of walks and a hit by pitch. The game's first run came across the plate on a Justin Gomez sacrifice fly before a two-out RBI single off the bat of Sean Aspinall doubled the lead.
After a run scoring single for Mychael Goudreau extended it to 3-0 in the second, Azusa Pacific tacked on three more in the third. They used a pair of RBI singles sandwiched around an RBI triple. Azusa Pacific added one more in the top of the fourth with a solo homer off the bat of Pablo O'Connor to make it 7-0.
Concordia put up their first real threat as
Ben Suits supplied a single and
Carter Schmidt added a double to put a pair in scoring position, but they were unable to push any runs in.
Zach Elder broke up the shutout on the first pitch of the bottom of the fourth as he launched a deep shot into the bullpen in left to get CSP on the board.
The Cougars pushed their lead out to eight at 9-1 in the sixth with a pair of runs, but the Golden Bears showed some serious resilience to make things interesting late.
With the reserves in the game for CSP, the team ended Fairchild's day by hanging four on the board in the sixth. After
Joe Muench reached on an error and
Andrew Shotwell drew a walk to start the inning,
Steven Nessler drove a solid single to center to load the bases with nobody out.
Adam Hildebrandt wasted little time to deliver a big hit as he drove a ground rule double over the head of the right fielder's head to drive in two. Confusion ensued as the umpires originally signaled it was a grand slam before deciding it cleared the wall on a hop.
Brad Fossum added an RBI groundout to bring home Nessler before
Connor Trygstad came through with a big RBI single through the hole into right to cut the deficit down to four at 9-5.
The Golden Bears sent the tying run up to the plate with nobody out in the seventh, but were only able to turn it into a run. Shotwell drew another walk before Nessler delivered another single and Hildebrandt battled his way to a walk in a long at-bat to load the bases. CSP ran into some tough luck as a hard grounder to the shortstop led to a double play as Shotwell scored. A groundout left Nessler at third as APU held onto a 9-6 lead heading to the eighth.
That would be all the closer that Concordia would get as the Cougars put the game out of reach with four runs in the top of the eighth and another in the ninth to bring the game to the final score of 14-6.
Concordia is back in action tomorrow afternoon as they take on Grand View at 3:30 p.m. central time.
