Eastern New Mexico Baseball | 03.25.2016 | David Norton | Photo by Claude Vigil
PORTALES, N.M. — The Eastern New Mexico baseball team had a promising start against No. 18 West Texas A&M and their No. 2 pitcher early, but similar to their previous contest, the Buffs would come storming back and end the contest early Friday, 16-5.
The Greyhounds slid to 9-19 overall and 2-13 in the Lone Star Conference. The No. 1 team in the LSC continued to rise, now sitting at 21-7 on the season and 10-4 in the LSC.
ENMU gave up two quick runs to the Buffs before coming back and tying the game in the bottom of the second off a two-run homerun by Mike McNichol. That would be the last score until the seventh inning for the Hounds, who had a tough time hitting West Texas' Brooks Trujillo.
Greyhound head coach David Gomez said, "Trujillo is one of the best pitchers in our league and we expected him to be good. Mike [McNichol] got to him on that one swing to tie it up, which we are really happy about for Mike, but then he settled in and started pitching really well, forcing guys to swing at tough pitches."
Eastern finished the night with six hits, half as many as their 12-hit performance against the Buffs in the previous days matchup. No Hound had more than one hit, with McNichol's homerun, Charles Sandberg Jr.'s triple and Andrew Stubbs' double being the only multi-base hits of the contest. In contrast, West Texas recorded 16 hits of their own.
"We expected it to be a tough game, though we didn't expect to pitch as poorly as we did. They had a lot of balls drop in play and that added to the fire," said Gomez. "Good for them that they were swinging well, but I think it's more about us on the defensive end. Against their pitcher and that team, we have to keep it close to have a chance and we couldn't do that tonight."
The Hounds recorded three errors on defensive, giving the Buffs three unearned runs. From the mound, James Thomas was stuck with the loss (0-2 on the season), while Jarron Hill and Keith Kozak would also give up some runs of their own, with the two pitchers combining for five earned runs and three hits.
In relief, Keenan Dodd and Daniel Schiller had respectable outings, with Schiller throwing three strike outs in 1.1 innings and Dodd fanning one in his one inning of work. Neither pitcher gave up and hit.
Walks were again an area of concern for ENMU, giving up nine on the night.
"Schiller did well for us, just like yesterday. He is starting to put things together, I think a couple of our guys are. We have a handful of guys, we just have to put it all on the same page. If we continue to get these guys some work on the mound, some more innings under their belt, they could really start seeing some good things happen," said Gomez.
Eastern will conclude their four-game series with the Buffs Saturday for a doubleheader. The first game is scheduled for a 12 p.m. (MT) start.
