Eastern New Mexico Baseball | 03.19.2016 | David Norton | Photo by Claude Vigil
PORTALES, N.M. — The Eastern New Mexico baseball team dropped two more games to Texas A&M-Kingsville Saturday, despite a good start from James Thomas on the mound in the second game, losing the first contest 19-3 and the second 6-0.
The Greyhounds moved to 8-17 overall and 1-10 in the Lone Star Conference. The Javelinas are now 16-6 overall and 8-4 in the LSC.
Thomas finished the day throwing six and one-third innings, striking out three batters and allowing only seven hits. Unfortunately for the starter, he would give up a total of six earned runs, two of which came right before he was relieved by Scott Klein.
"Thomas pitched well, maybe we left him in their one inning too long," said head Greyhound head coach David Gomez. "But that is back to back performances he has come out and given us a chance to win the game. Last weekend in Tarleton he got us the win and we just weren't fortunate enough to get this one."
On the day both Dylan Nault and Zach Shank recorded a single hit in each game. Shank extended his hitting streak to eight consecutive games with the two hits. Jacob Cluff was the only Hound to have a multi-hit performance, recording two hits in the first contest. The only two RBIs for ENMU on a day that saw the offense struggle came from Keenan Dodd and Justin Paul with one each – both in the first matchup as well.
Gomez said, "We had a lot of young guys out there today but we played much better defensively. We made some plays, watching Mike McNichol and Paul run some balls down and the young guys in the infield really giving a good effort. We keep building on that we will be pretty good in the second half."
The starter in the first contest, J'Daylin Jackson, moved to 2-4 on the season after the losing decision. He threw 2.2 innings, giving up six earned runs and striking out one batter. Chris Miranda-Carr, who came in as relief for three innings, had a decent outing, fanning four batters and allowing only three runs off three hits.
As for tomorrow's fourth and final game of the series, Gomez said, "Well we will have to figure out our pitching situation because we are short an arm this weekend. We will pick the right guy and hopefully the bullpen will hold up while we try to manufacture some runs here and there and see how it goes."
Game four is scheduled for a 1 p.m. (MT) start on Sunday. Following the Kingsville series, ENMU will prepare to host out of state rivals, the West Texas A&M Buffs. Those games have been moved up a day, with single games to be played at 6 p.m. (MT) on both Thursday and Friday, with the double header starting Saturday at 12 p.m. (MT).
