
Photo by: Keara Chaperon '22
Baseball Drops Series Opener, Slips Into Second Place
5/19/2022 8:45:00 PM | Baseball
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. – In a neck-and-neck race for the Mid-American Conference regular season title, Central Michigan took a big hit on Thursday.
Days after re-claiming the top spot in the league with a four-game series sweep at Eastern Michigan, the Chippewas fell on Thursday to Toledo, 4-2, in the opener of a four-game series at Theunissen Stadium.
CMU is 36-16, 28-7 MAC, and now trails first-place Ball State by one-half game. The Cardinals are 29-7 MAC after a 7-4 series-opening win on Thursday at Miami (Ohio).
Toledo, 32-21 overall, sits at third in the MAC at 23-14. The Chippewas and the Rockets are scheduled to play a doubleheader on Friday (noon) before finishing the regular season on Saturday (1 p.m.).
"I thought Toledo played very, very well," said CMU coach Jordan Bischel, whose team is vying for its third consecutive MAC regular season crown. "I thought their two pitchers threw well and we just played kind of average; we didn't make every play defensively with a couple of errors, had a couple other plays that maybe could have been made that we didn't, and we didn't put enough pressure on offensively."
Toledo's Mason Sykes had four hits, including a second-inning solo homer off Chippewa starter Jordan Patty. Patty exited after 5 1/3 innings and the Chippewas trailing, 2-1. He allowed three runs on five hits while striking out three in taking the loss.
Ryan Palmblad, Jake Jones and Ben Vitas pitched in relief for CMU.
Toledo starter and winner Kyle Jones went six innings and allowed one run on four hits while striking out seven. Cal McAninch went the final three frames for the save.
Mario Camilletti and Jakob Marsee led the Chippewas with two hits each. The Chippewas finished with six hits, but could muster just two walks. They entered the game averaging nearly six per game and were seventh in the nation with 297 free passes on the season.
After Sykes' homer gave the Rockets a 1-0 lead in the second, Toledo got a run in the fourth on a Trey Wright RBI single. Camilletti's RBI single in the fifth cut the Chippewas' deficit to 2-1, but the Rockets answered with a Wright RBI groundout in the sixth to make it 3-1.
The Rockets added an unearned run to make it 4-1 in the seventh when CMU committed back-to-back errors.
Marsee singled in a run in the eighth to complete the scoring.
No matter the stakes, Bischel continues to guide his team through the final series of the regular season with the same goals it set on day one.
The mindset for Thursday's game, he said, was "the same as every other game. We're going to try our hardest to win, to compete and have fun and some games it pans out, others it doesn't. Obviously, we're disappointed in today, but the sun will come up tomorrow and we'll be ready to play."
Days after re-claiming the top spot in the league with a four-game series sweep at Eastern Michigan, the Chippewas fell on Thursday to Toledo, 4-2, in the opener of a four-game series at Theunissen Stadium.
CMU is 36-16, 28-7 MAC, and now trails first-place Ball State by one-half game. The Cardinals are 29-7 MAC after a 7-4 series-opening win on Thursday at Miami (Ohio).
Toledo, 32-21 overall, sits at third in the MAC at 23-14. The Chippewas and the Rockets are scheduled to play a doubleheader on Friday (noon) before finishing the regular season on Saturday (1 p.m.).
"I thought Toledo played very, very well," said CMU coach Jordan Bischel, whose team is vying for its third consecutive MAC regular season crown. "I thought their two pitchers threw well and we just played kind of average; we didn't make every play defensively with a couple of errors, had a couple other plays that maybe could have been made that we didn't, and we didn't put enough pressure on offensively."
Toledo's Mason Sykes had four hits, including a second-inning solo homer off Chippewa starter Jordan Patty. Patty exited after 5 1/3 innings and the Chippewas trailing, 2-1. He allowed three runs on five hits while striking out three in taking the loss.
Ryan Palmblad, Jake Jones and Ben Vitas pitched in relief for CMU.
Toledo starter and winner Kyle Jones went six innings and allowed one run on four hits while striking out seven. Cal McAninch went the final three frames for the save.
Mario Camilletti and Jakob Marsee led the Chippewas with two hits each. The Chippewas finished with six hits, but could muster just two walks. They entered the game averaging nearly six per game and were seventh in the nation with 297 free passes on the season.
After Sykes' homer gave the Rockets a 1-0 lead in the second, Toledo got a run in the fourth on a Trey Wright RBI single. Camilletti's RBI single in the fifth cut the Chippewas' deficit to 2-1, but the Rockets answered with a Wright RBI groundout in the sixth to make it 3-1.
The Rockets added an unearned run to make it 4-1 in the seventh when CMU committed back-to-back errors.
Marsee singled in a run in the eighth to complete the scoring.
No matter the stakes, Bischel continues to guide his team through the final series of the regular season with the same goals it set on day one.
The mindset for Thursday's game, he said, was "the same as every other game. We're going to try our hardest to win, to compete and have fun and some games it pans out, others it doesn't. Obviously, we're disappointed in today, but the sun will come up tomorrow and we'll be ready to play."
Team Stats
Pitching:
W: JONES, Kyle (7-3)
L: Patty, Jordan (6-4)
S: McANINCH, Cal (6)
Batting:
HR: SYKES, Mason 1
RBI: MACKIEWICZ, Scott 1 ; SYKES, Mason 1 ; WRIGHT, Trey 2
Base Running:
RUNS: WILLIAMS, Jeron 1 ; SYKES, Mason 3
SB: MACKIEWICZ, Scott 1 ; SYKES, Mason 1 ; WINTERSTEIN, Nicky 1
HBP: DAVIS, Darryn 1

Batting:
2B: Camilletti, Mario 1
RBI: Camilletti, Mario 1 ; Marsee, Jakob 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Camilletti, Mario 1 ; Donahue, Jacob 1
Game Leaders
Hitting
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