A trip to Ohio’s Glass City revealed a few areas of the Bobcats’ game that still need to be polished.
Ohio (10-12, 1-2 Mid-American Conference) dropped its conference-opening series to Toledo after losing the rubber match 5-2 Sunday afternoon.
Senior Brent Choban threw a complete game in the victory Friday. The lefthander allowed 11 hits through the nine innings of work and surrendered only three runs, all in the second inning.
The Bobcats sent nine batters to the plate in their half of the third inning, scoring six times. Two runners scored on Ian Mezlak’s RBI single to give the Bobcats the lead for good.
After Friday’s game, Ohio coach Joe Carbone said he was unsure whether the Rockets would be fatigued in the coming games after sending four pitchers to the mound in the series opener.
“You never know,” Carbone said. “Their guy could go out tomorrow and throw a complete game against us. We were just trying to get one of the best pitchers in the conference, Michael Hamann, out of the game. We played a gutsy game.”
The Rockets used four more pitchers in Saturday’s contest, but the relievers held on for victory by quelling a late Bobcat rally.
Toledo took an early 2-0 advantage on a James Miglin home run and a Dan Zuchowski RBI single.
Ohio answered with three runs of its own in the top of the third inning. A two-run homer by Tyler Backstrom and a homer by Jensen Painter two batters later gave the Bobcats the 3-2 lead.
The Rockets added four more runs to take a 6-3 lead into the top of the ninth inning. The Bobcats rallied on the strength of another Painter home run, this time a two-run shot, but it was not enough as Toledo hung on to earn the victory.
Painter leads the team in home runs (7) and RBI (21). The senior was the MAC East player of the week this past week and made his case to be honored again.
Carbone said Painter’s time with the Southern Ohio Copperheads as well as spring ball helped him refine certain facets of his game.
“When guys come back from summer league, they come back better,” Carbone said. “He had adjustments to make, and he has made them.”
Painter homered in the sixth inning of the rubber game of the series, but two Ohio errors in the fifth inning led to two runs and a deficit that would not diminish.
“We gave some runs away early with our defense,” Carbone said. “We couldn’t put anything together to come back. We were at 4-2 for about five innings.”
Carbone gave credit to Toledo starting pitcher Jared Locke for subduing the Bobcat offense but also said his team needed to produce with runners in scoring position.
“We struck out nine times today and we can’t continue doing that,” Carbone said. “Guys are striking out with runners on third base with less than two outs — we can’t continue doing that.”
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