For the third-straight Tuesday, Ohio’s pitching staff turned in a solid effort to help its team to victory. This time, it was enough.
The Bobcats beat Dayton 5-2 on Tuesday night at Bob Wren Stadium. The win was Ohio’s fourth straight, a season high.
In a third-straight Tuesday game of throwing at least six pitchers, Ohio allowed three or fewer runs, after 3-1 and 3-0 losses to Morehead State and Ohio State, respectively.
“If you’re throwing out six, seven guys, they really don’t know what is going to come at them every time,” freshman catcher Tanner Piechnick, said. “Their mindset flips. It’s just hard to stay focused when you’re facing that kind of pitching, I think.”
Piechnick added that seeing several pitchers in a single game — all with different mechanics, pitch selections and timings — isn’t much of a challenge for him because he’s caught them all enough in practice. Their in-game warm up serves as enough of a refresher.
Nick Kamrada (0-1, 0.90 ERA) made his third start in seven appearances and tossed a perfect seven-pitch inning to start the Bobcats off on a positive note.
Matt Mikolajczak, Logan Jacik and Cory Blessing combined to suffocate the Flyers through three more hitless innings, allowing just two runners to reach second base.
In the fifth, Dayton’s Brad Burkhart earned a leadoff infield single. Blessing picked him off, but then allowed a walk and a two-run shot to right center to give Dayton a 2-1 lead.
Blessing allowed an earned run for the first time since Feb. 25. He’d pitched 13 innings with 16 strikeouts in six appearances since.
Those two runs would’ve been enough to defeat the Bobcats (15-12, 3-0 Mid-American Conference) in their two previous Tuesday games.
But they fired back in the bottom half of the inning to go on top 3-2 with a sacrifice fly from Rudy Rott and an RBI-double into the left field corner by Ty Black, who has six hits in his past three games.
Piechnick finished 3-for-4 in his first career multi-hit game and was a home run shy of the cycle.
Dayton had a chance to tie the game in the seventh, after Cale Dineen led off with a bunt single and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt. Then, sophomore righty Kenny Ogg forced back-to-back ground outs to second base to strand Dineen at third.
Ohio closer Jake Roehn struck out two in the ninth and earned his sixth save of the season, while the Bobcats snapped a four-game home losing streak.
With the way the offense has stepped up lately, scoring 28 runs the past four games, Ohio •coach Rob Smith is seeing a new positive from his team: balance.
“Early on, we were pitching and defending but we were having a hard time scoring runs,” Smith said. “You get into that five (runs) number, and we’re going to have a chance to win with the way we defend and the fact that we can typically keep the score down.”
