ELLENSBURG, WASH. – The Central Washington University baseball team (14-20-1, 11-16) will be heading south for a four-game series in Monmouth Oregon to play Western Oregon University (18-10, 15-10). This will be the two teams final team seeing each other in the regular season.
GAME INFORMATION
Friday, April 19
DH starting at 1:00 p.m.
Monmouth, Ore. | WOU Baseball Field
LIVE STATS |
LIVE VIDEO
Saturday, April 20
DH starting at 1:00 p.m.
Monmouth, Ore | WOU Baseball Field
LIVE STATS |
LIVE VIDEO
QUOTEABLE
"Last weekend was really tough for us," CWU Head Coach
Desi Storey said. "We lost a big part of our team with Yi-an going down and we dropped three games to a team we are battling for a playoff spot. We have to have a good weekend against Western Oregon in order to give ourselves a shot at the playoffs. We are going to need our pitchers to really step up and dominate the zone. We need to make sure that we execute our pitches and make sure that we get those timely hits and capitalize when we have runners in scoring position."
SCOUTING WESTERN OREGON UNIVERSITY
Western Oregon is coming in off of a two-win, two loss weekend against Montana State University Billings including a 23-10 victory in game three of the series. In the first matchup between the Wolves and the Wildcats, the two teams split the four-games.
Alex Roth is not only the best pitcher on the WOU staff, but he is also one of the best pitchers in the league. Roth is 6-0 in his eight starts and has struck out 69 of the 166 batters that he has faced and has walked just 16. Roth has a 3.09 ERA through his 46.2 innings which leads the league. Opponents are hitting just .205 against Roth on the year.
The Wolves have seven batters with a batting average of .300 or higher which leads all teams. Of those hitters, Jared McDonald leads the way through 96 at-bats with a .427 batting average. McDonald is second on the team with seven homeruns on the year and second on team with 32 RBIs on the year. The senior leads the team with 41 hits.
The last time the two teams met, WOU tallied 52 hits on the weekend and drove in 50 runs on the weekend. Both offenses blew up in game three of the series and combined for 46 runs on 39 hits. The teams also combined for 12 errors in the game.
LAST TIME OUT
The Wildcats are coming in fresh off a three loss weekend against Saint Martin's University. Day two consisted of just one game because of how long game one was and a weather delay.
A five-hour game that included a two-hour rain delay, made for a tough way to lose a game. Both team's offense came to life early in the game. The Wildcats scored three runs in the first inning thanks to a two out, two RBI double from
Jesse Unger that scored
Jason Hill and
Mitch Lesmeister.
Yi-an Pan then followed with an RBI single of his own.
The Saints answered back with three runs of their own. After two quick outs, SMU put together two base runners and then Austin Feist hit a two-run homerun to tie the game at three. Central added two more runs in the top of the fourth inning to retake the lead. In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Saints added one run before the game went into an hour and a half rain delay.
The delay marked the end of
Hunter French's day who went just three innings and allowed six runs on seven hits and struck out just one batter. Jacob Forester came in on relief after the delay and struggled to get comfortable and walked three batters before getting out of the inning. After four full innings of play, the Saints led 7-5.
Both teams added a run to their tallies in the fifth inning. Central's run came after both
Luke Smith and
Trevor Tripoli drew walks and then Lesmeister brought in Smith with a two out single to right field. Central's only other run came in the seventh inning when
Justin Hampson singled up the middle bringing in
Robert Ball who reach after getting hit by a pitch.
Lesmeister led the Wildcat offense going 3-3 with a walk, an RBI and scored two runs in the game.
