MOUNT VERNON, Ohio - Baseball traveled to Mount Vernon on Thursday evening to face off against the Cougars in a doubleheader on Saturday. MVNU won game one 11-1 and game two 6-5. Five of the last seven games in the series have been decided by one run.
Game One
Goshen capitalized on two first-inning errors from Mount Vernon. On the second error,
Chase Smith scored to give the Leafs an early edge. Goshen starter
AJ Lenn had a great start, getting out of the first and second innings. The Cougars scored in the bottom of the third to tie it up, and in the bottom of the fifth they took a 2-1 lead.
MVNU tacked on three runs in the sixth and six in the seventh.
AJ Lenn went 5.2 innings, allowing three earned runs and five total runs. He threw six strikeouts and allowed one walk. Goshen had three hits - all singles - from
Aidan Calvey,
Barron Welsh and
Hunter Oborn.
Game Two
In the afternoon's closer contest, Goshen nearly overcame a four-run deficit.
With
Dylan Pearson on the mound for the Leafs, the Cougars scored once in the first and again in the second to go up 2-0. They doubled their lead after the fourth inning, scoring two runs on one hit with the help of a GC error. Pearson went three innings, allowing two earned runs and three total.
In the top of the fifth, the Goshen bats started to awake. The Leafs began the inning with three straight singles from
Steven Lopez,
Barron Welsh and
Chase Smith. Pinch runner
Braxton Nagy scored on Smith's single. Welsh scored on an RBI groundout from
Nick Padron and Smith reached home on a wild pitch. The Leafs took the lead in the sixth on a two-RBI single to center from Smith.
Joel Berkholz and
Tommy O'Connor scored.
The lead wouldn't last long, as MVNU had three single in a row of their own in the bottom of the sixth. They took a 6-5 lead, and Goshen left two runners on base without scoring in the top of the seventh in the seven-inning game.
Both teams had eight hits.
Chase Smith,
Steven Lopez and
Barron Welsh had two hits apiece for Goshen. Smith had three RBIs and a run - his third three-RBI game this season. All eight of Goshen's hits were singles.
The Leafs are at Mount Vernon Nazarene again on Monday, April 20, at 1:00 pm. The home game against IU-South Bend scheduled for that day has been canceled.