The Oglethorpe baseball team dropped both games of a doubleheader Saturday afternoon at Anderson Field to the visiting Rhodes Lynx, causing them to lose 2-of-3 to the visitors in a 3-game series to open the SAA slate. The Stormy Petrels fell 5-3 in Game 1 and 10-5 in Game 2, dropping them to 6-5 on the season overall and 1-2 in SAA play.
The Rhodes starter allowed just 1 hit through the first 7 innings of play in Game 1, but the Petrels were able to stay in the contest. Senior right fielder Brandon Fish led off the fifth inning with Oglethorpe's first hit of the game, a ringing double. He then advanced to third on a fly ball to right field and scored on an RBI groundout from junior designated hitter Connor Crooke. That tied the game at 1-1 after Rhodes had taken the lead in the top of the second.
Rhodes scored 3 runs off of sophomore Oglethorpe lefty Kyle Babb in the sixth, though, pushing out to a 4-1 advantage. Babb wound up with the loss, his first of the season, after throwing 5-plus innings and allowing 4 runs on 6 hits. He walked 2 and struck out 6.
Rhodes added an additional run in the seventh, but the Petrels started to claw their way back in the eighth. Junior second baseman Matt Motz led off the inning with a home run, and Crooke followed with a walk and advanced to second on a wild pitch. A single from freshman shortstop Jacob Rivers put runners at the corners with one out, and junior left fielder Britton Araujo drove Crooke in with a groundout to make it 5-3.
Rhodes worked their way out of the frame, however, and set Oglethorpe down in order in the ninth for the win.
Game 2 saw the Petrels allow 8 unearned runs en route to a 10-5 defeat at the hands of the Lynx. Oglethorpe came back from a 5-3 deficit to tie the score in the sixth inning of a 7-inning contest, but Rhodes put up 5 unearned runs in the top of the seventh to secure the win.
Rhodes pushed a run across in the second to open the scoring, but Oglethorpe responded in the bottom half of the inning. Junior first baseman Dee Kelly led things off with a single to center, then junior designated hitter Corey Hamm followed with a hit-by-pitch. Rivers sacrificed the runners into scoring position, then Araujo tied the game with another RBI groundout. Junior center fielder Jarvis Miller stepped to the plate as the next better and sliced a home run just to the left of the right-field foul pole, a ball that landed atop the stone wall.
That 2-run shot gave Oglethorpe a 3-1 lead, but the Lynx responded with 4 runs over the next two innings, building a 5-3 advantage of their own. The Petrels pulled a run closer when they scored on a wild pitch in the fifth, and they tied the game in the sixth. Araujo walked and stole second, then came home on a run-scoring single by Ferlita. With the potential go-ahead run in scoring position, though, Rhodes got out of the inning with the score still 5-5. They then picked up 5 unearned runs off of freshman left-hander Preston Vegotsky in the seventh, pinning the loss on him despite 3 quality innings of work.
The Petrels will look to recover next week, but they'll have a difficult schedule to try and do it against. They'll head across town to take on No. 1 Emory at 2 p.m. Tuesday afternoon before traveling to Birmingham, Alabama, Friday for a 3-game set against No. 3 Birmingham-Southern.