By Steve Marovich, Athletics Staff Writer/2022 Baseball Contact
The Carthage College baseball team (4-11) opened a four-game trip to Terre Haute, Ind., on Friday, March 25 with a 6-2 loss to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (6-4) at Art Nehf Field.
Carthage took a 1-0 lead in the third inning when Cody Tostrud doubled, moved up on a ground ball and scored on an infield error. Rose-Hulman took a 3-1 lead in the fourth inning. The Fightin' Engineers loaded the bases with no outs in the fourth off Carthage starting pitcher Dante Guarascio. Adam Taylor hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game. Guarascio walked a batter to re-load the bases and proceeded to throw away a ground ball at first base, allowing a run to score. Guarascio hit the next batter, Shane Garner, to force in a third run.
Rose-Hulman upped its lead to 5-1 in the sixth. John Mesenbrink hit an RBI-triple, and a fielding error by Bryce Prybylinski allowed Messenbrink to score from third. Garner connected on a solo home run in the eighth to make it 6-1. Carthage closed out the scoring at 6-2 with a run in the ninth, an RBI-grounder off the bat of Matt Felber.
Matthew Rouse (1-1) was the winning pitcher and limited the Firebirds to a single unearned run on three hits and three walks over seven inning. Dante Guarascio (2-3) worked the first four innings for Carthage and allowed three runs, only one earned, on three hits and seven walks, while striking out five batters. Kyle McKinnon relieved in the fifth and Nic Vitritti in the eighth. At the plate, Cody Tostrud went two-for-four for the Firebirds.
"It should have been a 2-1 game," said Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV, "but we walked too many batters, made a crucial defensive mistake and hit into three double play balls. We had guys on base, hit the ball hard and had opportunities, but we're in a funk. We have to get out of this, and the only way to do that is to attack the game. Right now, we're on our heels, and the game is attacking us. If something can go wrong, it does. We're just in the wrong frame of mind to play baseball. There were some positives. We battled at the plate and didn't strike out, but we're not driving the ball with runners on base. It's such a learning process for us—we just need to change our mentality."
On Saturday, Carthage plays the Illinois Institute of Technology(3-7) at 10 a.m., CDT. A second game on Saturday against Rose-Hulman was canceled due to cold weather.