Baseball
 

April 2, 2008

Trinity Edges Schreiner to Sweep Season Series

San Antonio - Trinity's baseball team earned a tough 3-2 victory to sweep the season series from Schreiner University on Wednesday night.

Trinity (24-8) held off a late rally by the visitors to improve the team's winning streak to 10 games.  The Tigers have also won 14 of the past 15 games.

A run in the bottom of the first gave Trinity the early lead, then two more runs in the third put the Tigers up 3-0.  Brian Oates (5-1) had a no-hitter going through four innings, but that was broken up with a leadoff double in the fifth inning.  Oates went six innings to earn the win, striking out nine and allowing just two hits. 

With the nine strikeouts, Oates moves past Mike Bacsik on Trinity's all-time strikeouts list, totaling 243 in his career.  Oates is now fourth in school history in career strikeouts and is 30 away from tying for third place.

In the seventh, Ryan Poffenroth came on for the Tigers in relief.  The defense let Poffenroth down early, though, committing two errors that led to two unearned runs in the inning.  That comeback attempt was stopped short by an inning-ending 4-6-3 double play.

Poffenroth then pitched a perfect eighth, and Evan Bronson came on in the ninth to shoot for his third save of the year.  Bronson struck out the side in the ninth to earn the save and send the Tigers to victory.

Evan Jones was 3-3 offensively for Trinity, cracking his 19th double of the season to come within one of the school's single season record.  He drove in the first run of the game with a single in the first, then knocked in the game's third run with his third-inning double. 

Stosh Hoover was 1-2 with one run and one RBI, while Kevin Calbick and Dillan Early both had doubles for the Tigers.  Steven Ramos was 1-4 at the plate, but it was his defense that was especially good in tonight's game.

In the fifth, with runners on second and third, Ramos chased down a wild pitch and tossed a perfect strike to Oates to keep Schreiner off the scoreboard - a play that turned out to be very important in this one-run game.  In the sixth, Ramos then threw out back-to-back runners attempting to steal second, helping Oates to finish off the inning.

Trinity returns home next week, taking on the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in a Tuesday doubleheader that will begin at 4:00 p.m.  Later that weekend, Trinity will host Millsaps College in a four-game SCAC series.