WARRENSBURG, Mo. – The Concordia-St. Paul baseball team (0-3) fell to #4 Central Missouri (11-3) in the series finale by a score of 7-0 on Saturday afternoon.
The Golden Bears remained within striking distance heading into the middle innings of the contest, but were unable to get much going offensively as the Mules pulled away late to complete the series sweep.
Freshman
Griffin Lapp (0-1) did a good job of working out of jams over the first several innings against the high-powered Central Missouri offense, but it was unable to escape the fifth inning as he took the loss in his debut on the mound. The freshman right-hander tallied a strikeout over 4.0+ innings of work in the contest.
Ross Bastyr and
Shane Benson each provided 2.0 innings of relief as Bastyr allowed just two hits while Benson held them to one.
At the plate,
Jack Becker picked up his first career hit with a pinch-hit single in the eighth while
Shea Pekarek added a double and
Jarod Wandersee chipped in a single as well.
Central Missouri took advantage of the long ball in the contest as four different players hit home runs to account for five of the team's seven runs.
In the bottom half of the second inning, a leadoff double for the Mules followed by a wild pitch and a passed ball put the first run on the board. Lapp recovered from there and held UCM to just the lone run until the fourth when Central Missouri took advantage of some more small ball to extend the lead to 2-0 with a run coming in on a balk.
Central Missouri broke through in the fifth as they went deep three times in the frame, driving in four runs, to extend the lead to 6-0. UCM picked up their fourth homer of the game two innings later in the seventh to bring the score to 7-0.
The Golden Bears threatened in several innings as they put runners in scoring position in the first, fourth, fifth and eighth innings, but they were unable to turn it into runs as UCM had seven different pitchers combine for the shutout.
The Golden Bears will look to get into the win column on Wednesday as they take on St. Cloud State at US Bank Stadium in a doubleheader scheduled to begin at 10 a.m.
