Baseball: Mountaineers Win 8th Straight
March 18, 2006 04:24 PM | General
March 18, 2006
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| Marty Fagler |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Senior Marty Fagler allowed one run through seven innings and junior Dan Leatherman pitched a scoreless two innings of relief to help West Virginia to a 3-1 victory over Eastern Michigan Saturday afternoon at Hawley Field.
Yesterday the Mountaineers got a 10th-inning walk-off home run from Adam White to beat the Eagles 4-3. West Virginia has now won eight straight and nine of its last 10 games.
“These were two really good games, intense, and we had to play every inning out to the end,” Fagler said...
Fagler (2-1) was in control throughout, mixing five hits with six strikeouts and a walk. Leatherman worked the last two innings, fanning five of the six batters he faced for his first save of the year.
“I felt good today and I just wanted to go out and pitch as well as I could because I knew they were running out a good pitcher today and it was going to be tough to score runs off of him,” Fagler said. “And it’s good to know you’ve got someone like Leatherman coming in behind you.”
West Virginia (14-3) got on the board first in the third inning. Tyler Kuhn led off with a triple to center and he scored when Eastern Michigan’s Josh Ivan couldn’t handle Doug Nelms’ bouncer to short. Justin Jenkins followed with a single through the left side moving Nelms to second, but Eagle starter Jeff Fischer was able to work out of the jam.
In the sixth, Casey Bowling led off with a walk and moved into scoring position on Jason Pape’s sacrifice bunt to the pitcher. White followed with a well-placed single down the leftfield line to score Bowling, and after White stole second, he came around to score when Kuhn laced a double to right.
Eastern Michigan’s only run of the game came in the eighth when Matt Moffett hit a home run over the centerfield fence.
“My off-speed pitch was working pretty well today and I was able to control everything most of the time,” Fagler said.
Kuhn went 2 for 3 with a run scored and a pair of walks to boost his batting average to .431. Jenkins went 2 for 4 in the DH spot while catcher David Carpenter also got a pair of hits.
Eastern Michigan first baseman Steve Bradshaw had two hits for the Eagles, now 4-9.
EMU starter Jeff Fischer gave up three earned runs on six hits in six innings of work to take the loss. He is now 3-2.
The two teams will wrap up the weekend series on Sunday with a game at 1 pm.
