TYLER, Texas – The Southwestern University Pirates baseball team surrendered a season-high 15 runs, dropping its fourth consecutive game with a 15-6 loss to the Wisconsin-Platteville Pioneers on a neutral field.
The Pioneers scored three runs in each of the first three innings, going through three Southwestern pitchers over that time.
Southwestern starter William Harp opened the game with a strikeout but followed by walking the bases loaded, bringing Travis Harvey to the mound. A wild pitch from Harvey scored the first run, followed by a Mitchell Susa RBI-single to shortstop and Ryan Vogel sacrifice fly to shallow left field to score Connor Crotty.
A walk, three consecutive singles and another walk put two more runs on to start the top of the second inning for the Pioneers, followed by a Crotty sac fly to score Jonathan Kelso.
The Pioneers started the top of the third inning with a leadoff triple by Ryan Vogel, who scored on a sacrifice fly by Brendon Reifsteck. Sam Behm followed with a single, ending Harvey's day for relief pitcher Nathaniel Haynes. Ben Espinoza followed with a RBI-triple and Curtis Bersness grounded out to shortstop, scoring Espinoza.
Southwestern finally got on board with a Colby Schmidt RBI-double to left field, scoring Cole Kelly, who reached on a single.
Crotty walked to leadoff the fourth for the Pioneerse, scoring on a Vogel RBI-double to left center for a 7-1 lead.
Byron Dowdell II hit a two-run homerun in the fifth for the Pirates, scoring Daniel Montgomery Jr., who reached on a walk. Schmidt was hit by a pitch and Ethan Hallmark knocked him in with a triple to left center to bring the Pirates to within 7-4.
Hallmark cut into the lead again in the bottom of the seventh, getting hit by a pitch with bases loaded to score Kelly and cut the Pioneer lead to 7-5.
The Pirates' Ruben Garcia took the mound in the eighth for Koba Kobayashi, who pitched 3.2 scoreless innings with two strikeouts. After walking the first batter, Garcia induced two groundouts but struggled with control to close the inning, hitting a batter, walking another, and hitting another with bases loaded to score Mitchell Susa, ending his afternoon.
Blake Grider took the mound in Garcia's place, giving up a two-RBI single to Kelso and another two-RBI single to Mormann before getting out of the inning.
The Pirates added a run in the eighth inning on a Schmidt sacrifice fly but both teams went scoreless in the ninth to close out the game.
In all, Southwestern surrendered 14 hits and eight walks with four hit batters. Dowdell led the Pirates offensively, hitting 3-for-4 with two RBI and a run scored. Kelly was 2-for-4 with two runs scored.
With the loss, the Pirates drop to 10-6 on the season and will resume conference play tomorrow with a doubleheader against Austin College starting at 3:00 p.m. and a third game on Saturday at 1:00 p.m.