It was Bark at the Park day Sunday at Bob Wren Stadium, but the offense featured more bite.
The Bobcats (18-17, 8-4 Mid-American Conference) took the first two games of the series behind an offense that played aggressively and some stellar starting pitching.
“We’d like to do that,” Ohio coach Joe Carbone said about the aggressive base running that jumpstarted the offense. “It’s not always a guarantee. You can run yourself out of ball games sometimes.”
The Cardinals scored the game’s first run in the fourth inning on a sacrifice fly by Blake Beemer that scored Sean Godfrey.
Ohio put at least two runners on from innings two through five but could not push any runs across.
To counteract the Bobcats’ struggles at the plate, Carbone forced the issue with the base running.
Garrett Black doubled with two outs in the Bobcat seventh. He raced around third to just beat the tag and tie things up on a single by Ethan Newton up the middle.
Tyler Wells walked and Jensen Painter reached base after being hit by the pitch to load the bases. Jake Madsen laced a two-run RBI single to put the Bobcats ahead.
“It’s all about doing your job,” Madsen said. “I just happened to be the guy up there at that moment.”
Ohio poured it on in the eighth, adding three more runs to extend the lead to 6-1.
Starter Brent Choban (5-2) went the distance for his second complete game of the season and the fourth of the season for the Bobcats.
Offense continued to be a major factor throughout the weekend. In the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, Ohio survived a furious comeback by the Cardinals to win 11-9.
The Bobcats raced out to a 10-2 lead after five innings. The heart of the order contributed six runs to the effort with Dan Schmidt and Kyle Dean bringing in two runs a piece.
Starter Jason Moulton (3-2) limited the Cardinal hitters to two earned runs during his seven-inning outing. Ball State’s offense came alive in the seventh and eighth innings, scoring seven runs.
Marck Paliotto, Brett Barber and Shane Cole combined to finish the eighth inning. Sean Kennedy came in the ninth to close things down for the save.
Watching the lead dwindle can be nerve-wracking for a starter, but Moulton said he was not worried.
“I got good faith in our relievers,” he said. “It was just a couple bad hits they had.
Things didn’t go our way, a couple base hits strung together. It happens – it’s baseball.”
In the second half of the doubleheader, the Cardinals took an early two-run lead, but Ohio would eventually tie the game on a Cody Gaertner single.
The Bobcat bullpen could not hold the tie as Ball State pushed another run across the dish with no rebuttal from Ohio.
“We didn’t come up with a big base hit when we had some men on base to get a go-ahead run,” Carbone said. “We were scrambling the whole game just to tie the game.”
nr225008@ohiou.edu
