The Youngstown State baseball team scored five runs in both the fourth and fifth innings and beat Northern Kentucky 11-5 in a gutsy performance in an elimination-game victory on Friday at the 2022 Horizon League Baseball Championship.
The fifth-seeded Penguins remain alive in the postseason tournament and will play another elimination game this evening against either No. 1 Wright State or No. 2 Oakland at Nischwitz Stadium in Dayton, Ohio. The contest will begin at approximately 8 p.m. or 50 minutes after the conclusion of the game between the Raiders and Golden Grizzlies, who are playing in the winners' bracket final.
YSU, which lost 2-0 to Oakland in a game that extended beyond midnight due to rain on Thursday, overcame a pair of three-run deficits in Friday's victory over the Norse. Youngstown State trailed 3-0 and 4-1 before erupting for 10 runs over the fourth and fifth innings.
Turner Grau went 3-for-4 with a career-high five RBIs, which is tied for the most ever by a Penguin in the Horizon League tournament, and the bottom five batters in YSU's lineup scored all 11 runs.
On the mound, Travis Perry pitched a gritty 6.2 innings of relief after coming in with the Penguins down 3-0. He was the third YSU pitcher to toe the rubber in the third inning, and he stabilized the game while allowing the Penguins to save their pitching staff as they continue to push forward in the tournament. Perry allowed four runs, two of which came when YSU was up by six runs in the ninth, on four hits and six walks while striking out seven Norse hitters to improve his record to 4-3.
With Friday's game beginning less than 12 hours after the Penguins came up short in the winners' bracket, Youngstown State had an uphill battle before the first pitch was even thrown. NKU, which fell to Wright State before the rain came, finished its game just after 2:30 p.m. on Thursday and had almost 10 more hours of rest than YSU.
NKU had a chance to take a big advantage early as it stranded five runners over the first two innings off of YSU starter Jon Snyder, and the Norse broke through in the third to take a 3-0 lead. Snyder, who battled his command but kept the game from getting out of hand, issued his sixth and seventh walks of the game before giving way to Casey Marshalwitz with nobody out in the third. Marshalwitz promptly allowed a three-run homer to cleanup batter Brennan Gick, but he and Perry combined to strike out the next three Norse hitters to keep the margin at 3-0.
The Penguins got a run back in the bottom half of the third as Grau brought in Trey Law with an RBI triple, and that three-bagger signaled the start of a prolonged stretch where YSU was barreling balls. Braeden O'Shaughnessy flew out to the warning track to end the inning, and NKU answered with a run in the top of the fourth as Manny Vorhees hit a solo homer to make it 4-1.
Down three again, Youngstown State posted five runs on five hits in each of the next two innings to take control of the game.
After NKU starter Kaden Echeman retired the first YSU hitter in the fourth, the next seven batters resulted in five hits, a walk and a hit batsman as the Penguins sent 10 hitters to the plate in the inning. Steven D'Eusanio got it started with a single, and Andre Good and Padraig O'Shaughnessy followed with RBI doubles that both one-hopped the wall. Dylan Swarmer was then hit by a pitch and Law walked to load the bases, and Lucas Nasonti lined a single off of Echemen's leg for an RBI single that tied the game at 4-4. NKU went to the bullpen, and, with the middle infielders at double-play depth, Grau greeted Bryson Lonsbury with a two-run single through the right side to plate Law and Swarmer to give YSU its first lead of the day. The Penguins would never lose that advantage.
Perry hit the leadoff batter in the top of the fifth, and Brandon Tucker's two-out RBI single cut the deficit to 6-5. That was the final run the Norse scored off the Penguin reliever until the top of the ninth.
The first five Youngstown State batters reached in the bottom of the fifth, and it was D'Eusanio again getting the offense going with a leadoff double. He scored two batters later on Padraig O'Shaughnessy's RBI single, and Law made it a 9-5 margin with a two-run single off of new reliever Andrew Mulhern. Graw then extended the lead to 11-5 with a two-run single to center that plated Law and Swarmer.
Perry settled in with the six-run cushion, and he allowed one baserunner over each of the next three innings to keep the score 11-5. With his pitch count over 100, Perry walked three batters in the ninth and allowed two to come home on wild pitches, but he was able to hold on and keep the bullpen fresh. He loaded the bases with one out, but he came back from down 3-0 in the count to strike out Zack Minton and got Vorhees to fly out to end the game.
In addition to Grau's three hits, Nasonti, D'Eusanio, Good, Padraig O'Shaughnessy and Swarmer each had two hits as YSU finished with 14 as a team. Law also had a hit and scored a game-high three runs. Swarmer reached in all five of his trips to the plate from the eighth spot in the lineup.
For Northern Kentucky, Tucker was the only player on the visiting team with two hits as YSU's pitchers held the Norse to five hits total. The Norse did draw 13 walks, but they struck out 10 times and stranded 12 runners on base. Echeman was charged with his ninth loss of the season, allowing six runs on five hits in 3.1 innings.
