The Carthage College baseball team (15-15, 8-7 College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin) won a three-game series with CCIW-opponent Elmhurst College (17-15, 6-9 CCIW) by defeating the Bluejays, 11-7, on Sunday, April 24 at Augie Schmidt Field in Kenosha, Wis. The two teams split a Saturday, April 23 doubleheader at Butterfield Park in Elmhurst, Ill. Elmhurst won the first game, 11-10, but Carthage took the nightcap by an 11-2 margin.
With the series win, along with Wheaton College (Ill., 19-14, 7-8 CCIW) losing three games to first-place North Central College (23-5, 11-4 CCIW) over the weekend, the Red Men moved into sole possession of fourth place in the league. The top-four teams qualify for the CCIW Baseball Tournament.
Carthage jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning, as six of the first seven Red Men reached base. Zach Wade had an RBI-single for the first run, and Matt Rave followed with a three-run home run off Elmhurst starting pitcher Justin Luzzi. With pitcher Jared Helmich on the hill, three Carthage errors in the second inning led to three unearned runs for the Bluejays to make it a 4-3 game. Carthage's Ryan Kramer, whose outfield error in the second led to a pair of those three Bluejay runs, made up for it with a two-run homer in the third to up the Red Men's lead to 6-3.
Daryl Rivera replaced Luzzi on the hill in the fourth, and Wade greeted Rivera with a three-run homer to bump the Carthage lead to 9-3. Ben Havel's solo homer to dead-centerfield in the fifth brought the Bluejays to within five runs, 9-4. Carthage's A.J. Kaprelian hit a solo homer in the fifth to make it 10-4, before Elmhurst added another run in the sixth to trail, 10-5. The Red Men scored a run in the eighth on a Jordan Wiegold single, and the Bluejays tallied two in the ninth off relief pitcher Kyle Cibrario to close out the scoring at 11-7.
Carthage collected 14 hits and used four home runs to help overcome a four-error game. A.J. Kaprelian went three-for-four with a home run, and Jordan Wiegold went three-for-five. Zach Wade had two hits in five trips, including a home run, and drove in four runs. Jared Helmich upped his pitching mark to 5-0. The four errors hurt, and Helmich allowed five runs, just two earned, on eight hits and three walks over eight innings. Kyle Cibrario worked the final two innings and surrendered two runs on three hits. Justin Luzzi (2-3), the first-of-four Bluejay hurlers, took the loss.
"We didn't play the cleanest game out of the chute," admitted Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV, "but it got better as the game went on. Our hitting overcame some of our defensive deficiencies. While we'd like to play better defense than that, it's the time of the year where we're just trying to scrounge up wins any way we can get them. We got decent pitching from Jared Helmich, and a win is a win. It's kind of the way the year has gone—if something can go wrong, it will. It's never the same problem from one day to the next."
Carthage travels to Whitewater, Wis., on Tuesday, April 26 for a 3 p.m. game versus No. 3 Wisconsin-Whitewater at Prucha Field. The Red Men play at home next on Thursday, April 28 by playing host to Aurora University in a 3 p.m. contest at Augie Schmidt Field.
"We have a couple of tough non-conference games this week with Wisconsin-Whitewater and Aurora," said Schmidt, "and then we get back into the conference scuffle with Millikin next weekend."