The Oglethorpe baseball team started a busy stretch of five games in three days with a doubleheader split against the visiting Rose-Hulman Fightin' Engineers on Saturday afternoon at Anderson Field. The Stormy Petrels took a back-and-forth Game 1 by the score of 8-7, then fell 4-0 in the second game. The results moved Oglethorpe to 9-4 on the season headed into a 3-game set with Kalamazoo over the next two days.
The Petrels fell behind 4-1 after the first two innings of the first game, but as they've done several times this year, they responded by scoring four runs over the next three innings to tie the game.
Then in the sixth inning, freshman catcher Alex Babb walked to lead off the frame and was sacrificed to second by senior third baseman Connor Crooke. A couple batters later, senior Bobby Rezac came to the plate as a pinch-hitter and delivered an RBI single through the left side of the infield to give the Petrels the lead.
Oglethorpe gave the lead back in the seventh, as sophomore right-hander Jack Bartlewski suffered his first blown save of the season, allowing a couple of unearned runs on three hits and an error. The Petrels had a chance for two quick outs to start the seventh and final inning, but wound up with none on an error and a ball lost in the sun. Bartlewski struck out a couple of Engineers to make it two outs with the bases loaded, but they got a 2-run single at that point to flip back into the lead, 7-6.
The Petrels came back in the bottom half of the inning, though. They got back-to-back walks to start things off, then a single and a Rose-Hulman error loaded the bases with one out after an Oglethorpe runner was thrown out at the plate stretching to tie the game. Oglethorpe tied the game on a bases-loaded walk by Babb, then put it away on a wild pitch, securing the 8-7 comeback win.
The teams exchanged runs in the first, but the Engineers scored three in the top of the second to take a 4-1 lead. The Petrels battled back with a couple in the third off a 2-run single from senior designated hitter Adrian Celata to make it 4-3. Rose-Hulman added an insurance run in the fifth to make it 5-3, but the Petrels responded with a couple of game-tying tallies in the fifth, one of which came off a home run from senior right fielder Patrick Burnette.
Bartlewski wound up with the win, improving to 1-0 on the season.
The Petrels couldn't get anything going with the bats in the second game. They managed only two hits against Engineers pitcher Trever Bruno in the contest. The visitors scored single runs in the third, fourth, sixth and seventh for the 4-0 victory.
Sophomore left-hander Jackson Harrell suffered the loss in Game 2, falling to 0-1 on the season. He allowed a run on four hits and a walk over three innings, striking out three in the process.
The Petrels will now immediately turn around and take on the Kalamazoo Hornets in a 3-game series, beginning Sunday at 2 p.m. The series will conclude with a single game Monday at 11 a.m. from Anderson Field.