HUNTSVILLE – The Alabama State baseball team gained a split of its first Southwestern Athletic Conference road series at Alabama A&M, losing game one 5-4, before winning game two 11-1 in seven innings.
Alabama State (16-6 overall, 8-1 SWAC) won for the 12
th time in its last 15 games, while Alabama A&M fell to 7-13, 4-4.
The teams will play the final game of the series Sunday at 1 p.m.
Game 1 – Alabama A&M 5, Hornets 4: Alabama State led twice in the opener, but couldn't put the Bulldogs away.
Cesar Rivera's two-run homer to right field, his first of the season, gave the Hornets a 2-0 lead in the third inning. The lead extended to 3-0 in the fourth on a bases-loaded walk to
Richard Amion, scoring
Dexter Price who doubled.
The Bulldogs scored one in the fourth and two in the sixth to tie the game at 3-3 before Alabama State regained the lead in the eighth as
Marcus Swint scored on a double-play groundout. However, Alabama A&M scored two in the eighth for the final margin.
"I thought in the first game, we battled but our pitching was not sharp," head coach
Mervyl Melendez said. "We left a lot of pitches up, and you have to give Alabama A&M a lot of credit. They took advantage of our mistakes, especially offensively. We didn't make quality pitches, and left pitches up in the zone. Also, we didn't capitalize when we had situations to really score. We had a first-and-third situation with no one out (in the eighth inning) and hit into a double play. Although the run scored, that only put us up one and they were able to come back and score two runs."
Amion, Rivera, and Emanuel Marrero each had two hits in the 11-hit attack.
Game 2 – Hornets 11, Alabama A&M 1 (7): The highest-scoring inning of the season, an eight-run fourth, propelled Alabama State to the big win.
Trailing 1-0 after three innings, ASU broke the game open with nine hits in the inning, with five of them were infield hits, including a pair of bunt singles.
Waldyvan Estrada led off with a single to left field, before Marrero beat out a bunt single to the right side.
Following a sacrifice bunt moving the runners to second and third, Price beat out an infield single to shortstop, scoring Estrada. Swint followed with a bunt single to second base, scoring Marrero. Following a second sacrifice bunt, Alabama State scored six times with two out.
Price scored on a wild pitch, as Swint advanced to third.
Einar Muniz singled to center, scoring Swint. Amion and Rivera followed with back-to-back infield singles to load the bases. Estrada then singled to left center on an 0-2 pitch, scoring Muniz and Amion. Marrero then ripped a two-run triple to left center, scoring Rivera and Estrada for an 8-1 Hornet lead.
The Hornets added a run in the fifth on an RBI single by Muniz, scoring Swint, and completed the scoring in the seventh. With one out, Price, Swint, and
Raul Perez walked to load the bases. Muniz, who went 3-for-4 with three RBI and a run scored, singled to left, scoring Price. Amion's sacrifice fly to center scored Swint for the final margin.
"I'm very proud of our guys in how we fought back," Melendez said of his teams' response after the game one loss. "The second game was totally different. We were about to put a big fourth inning on the board, and I was very proud of the effort as well.
Joseph Camacho was outstanding and kept the ball down. Everything we did wrong in the first game, he fixed in the second game and gave us a chance to win."
Marrero went 3-for-4 in the nightcap with two RBI and a run scored, Estrada went 2-for-4 with a pair of runs scored, and a pair of RBI, and Amion went 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored.
Camacho (3-1) went the distance, allowing only five hits, walking none and striking out one.
