ANN ARBOR, Mich. (May 19, 2022) – The No. 25 Rutgers baseball team lost a back-and-forth contest to Michigan on Thursday night, falling by a score of 9-6 in Ann Arbor. In total, seven home runs were hit, but five of those were by the Wolverines who also took advantage of eight walks and a hit-by-pitch from the RU pitching staff.
"We didn't pitch well today. We need to be better," head coach
Steve Owens said. "We need to keep the ball in the park and get in better counts. The free passes make everything worse. We need to get ahead of hitters, we need to locate better and we need to be able to get some chases and weak contact."
Throughout the night, the RU lineup had no problem getting men on base, as
Ryan Lasko and
Danny DiGeorgio hit back-to-back singles to leadoff the game. They would both be stranded, however, and it was a scoreless top of the first,
The Wolverines then jumped on starter
Jared Kollar, hitting back-to-back solo home runs to open the bottom half, taking a quick 2-0 lead.
That lead would not last long, as
Jordan Sweeney hit a solo home run to dead center in the second, before
Mike Nyisztor doubled and scored on a DiGeorgio RBI single.
The early innings would set the stage for a back-and-forth affair, as UM once again took the lead in the bottom of the fourth. Riley Bertram scored on a sac fly to make it a 3-2 lead and then Clark Elliott launched his second solo home run of the game to make it 4-2.
Rutgers once again responded immediately, this time with a two-out rally. With two outs,
Evan Sleight struck out to seemingly end the inning, but the ball got away and he beat out the throw to first.
Josh Kuroda-Grauer then worked a walk on a full count, setting the stage for Sweeney. After looking at ball one, Sweeney demolished a 3-run home run deep into left-center field, giving RU a 5-4 lead.
With
Jared Kollar out of the game after four innings, Michigan responded strongly in the bottom of the fifth, hitting a pair of 2-run home runs to make it 8-5. Another run on a bases-loaded walk in the sixth pushed the UM lead to 9-5.
While the Scarlet Knights added a run on an RBI fielder's choice from
Nick Cimillo in the eighth, they once again stranded two runners on base to end the frame, their 10th and 11th stranded runners of the night.
"Offensively, we did a good job of getting hits. We created scoring opportunities four or five times where we were unable to score," Owens said. "But we've got to pitch better. That's the bottom line. We've got to pitch better."
Game two of the series between Rutgers and Michigan will be Saturday at 8 p.m. in Ann Arbor.
