The Ashland University baseball team closed the regular season with a 9-2 win over Saginaw Valley on Sunday (May 16) afternoon at Donges Field.
Prior to the game, the Eagles recognized their five seniors, including first baseman
Carson Mittermaier, third baseman
Garett Robberts, outfielder
Michael Rogers, pitcher
Josh Smith and catcher
Logan Stoldt.
The Eagles (22-17, 17-11 GLIAC) finished fourth in the GLIAC standings and will play Northwood in the first round of the GLIAC Tournament on Thursday (May 20) in Lansing, Mich. First pitch is set for 6 p.m.
On Sunday, the Eagles scored in each of the first five innings as they built an 8-1 lead behind starter
Jacob Harsany.
Harsany (4-1) gave up an unearned run in the first inning, but was otherwise strong in his 10
th start of the season. He allowed just four hits and struck out five in his five innings of work, needing to use just 66 pitches.
Offensively, junior
Austin Eifrid got the Eagles started with a leadoff home run – his third homer of the season – in the first inning. Ashland scored two more runs in the inning on four hits to take a 3-1 llead.
Eifrid's RBI single in the second pushed the lead to 4-1 and junior
Alex Whipple followed with an RBI single through the middle to make it 5-1.
Robberts added an RBI single in the fourth and hit a leadoff home run in the seventh to push his RBI total to 54. He is also fourth in the GLIAC with 10 home runs.
Eifrid went 3-for-3 with a homer, two runs, two RBI and was hit by a pitch while Robberts went 4-for-4 with a homer, three runs and two RBI. Mittermaier and Rogers had two hits apiece.
Juniors
Joel Ciccarelli and
Tim Zeller and sophomore
Josh Meyer all pitched in relief.
Smith also appeared in the game, getting his first collegiate at-bat by nearly beating out a ground ball up the middle that SVSU shortstop Connor McClennen dug out with a sliding stop.
The Eagles finished the regular season with an 11-6 record at Donges Field and are now 46-12 at home since 2018.
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