Central Michigan University
Toledo
Chippewas Can't Complete Sweep
4/24/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - In a close game, miscues become magnified, no matter when they occur.
The Central Michigan baseball team committed three costly errors — two of them on back-to-back Toledo bunts in the first inning — on Sunday in dropping a 4-3 Mid-American Conference game to Toledo at Theunissen Stadium.
The Chippewas, who took the series by winning the first two games, are 10-30, 5-7 MAC and play at Oakland (17-14) on Wednesday in a non-conference game. They go to Eastern Michigan (14-22, 6-6) for a MAC series next weekend.
Toledo (9-31-1, 4-8) took advantage of two CMU throwing errors and a wild pitch in scoring three runs in the first inning on Sunday, then scored what proved to be the winning run another CMU error in the seventh.
All four Toledo runs were unearned.
"We just didn't play well in the first inning," CMU coach Steve Jaksa said. "It's disappointing, bottom line. Those are things that are just hard to put your arms around and accept because we just know we're better than that in that situation."
Pat Leatherman (0-4) took the loss. He allowed three runs on five hits, walked three and struck out four over 6 1/3 innings.
Jordan Grosjean, Jimmy McNamara and Colton Bradley each pitched in relief for the Chippewas.
Michael Jacob earned the win with four innings of relief. He allowed two runs on four hits, struck out one and walked two.
Alex Borglin had three hits including a pair of doubles to lead the Chippewas at the plate. CMU outhit the Rockets, 9-8. Toledo did not commit an error.
Leatherman walked the game's first batter, Cory Finkler, then made a throwing error on Ross Adolph's sacrifice bunt to put two on with none out. The next batter, Deion Tansel, layed down a sacrifice bunt and CMU third baseman Morgan Oliver was charged with a throwing error, allowing Finkler to score.
A sacrifice fly made it 2-0, and the Rockets got another run on a wild pitch.
"Play good defense, that's what we talked about, play good defense and let Pat do his deal and see where it takes us," Jaksa said. "That's what we did (Saturday in a 1-0 win) and that's what we did on Friday (14-2 win).
"We played very good defense those two days and today, for one inning, for some reason, we didn't play defense.
"(Leatherman) pitched great. I've got no problems with how he pitched. He competed and that's what he does. … We've got to make them earn that from us, not just give them the opportunity to beat us because we didn't play good defense."
The Chippewas got RBI doubles from Daniel Jipping and Borglin to draw to 3-2, but in the seventh, a throwing error on a pickoff attempt at second base by Grosjean allowed another run to score, making it 4-2.
The Chippewas got one back in the eighth on Ryan Heeke's RBI groundout, but left the potential tying run at third.
Despite the loss, the Chippewas came away from the weekend with plenty on which to hang their hats. They won their first MAC series of the season, and they got three solid-to-outstanding starts from Sean Renzi, Nick Deeg and Leatherman.
The Chippewa pitching staff limited the Rockets to six runs - just one of them earned -and the Chippewas collected 28 hits in the series.
"Winning the series, that's great," Jaksa said. "But there's more, there was a bigger fish to fry so to speak and we didn't get it done simply because we didn't make a couple plays that we normally make.
"If we don't give them those things we might have a different outcome obviously. We've got to move one notch higher. When you have an opportunity like we did today, we've got to capitalize on it and we just didn't do that."
