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Photo by Brett Stanley/The Advocate
Above: Shortstop Griffin Boyd makes a stop up the middle in the first inning during game one of Saturday afternoon’s doubleheader against Linn-Benton. Boyd finished the game 4 for 5 at the plate and is batting .333 on the season. The Saints picked up the victory 11-1.
Saints charge into first place in South on four-game win streak
The Advocate
The Saints baseball team jumped into first place in the Southern Region in the past week with doubleheader sweeps against the Lane Community College Titans and Linn-Benton Community College Roadrunners.
The team improved to 16-10 overall and 9-3 in the Region.
The Saints had struggled early in the season to pick up consecutive victories but now sit on a four game win streak with the strength of young pitching and the offense hitting their stride.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun splitting doubleheaders,” Saints skipper Bryan Donohue said Wednesday night. “I think they finally understand what it takes to win (doubleheaders) and what that feels like. I still say our best baseball is yet to come.”
With the two most recent victories Saturday against Linn-Benton, the Saints have improved to 4-0 against the Roadrunners this year. The Saints bombed them 11-1 in game one followed by an 8-2 victory in game two. The team ended the evening with a total of 27 hits in the two games.
Centerfielder Michael Blake and shortstop Griffin Boyd each had four hits in the winning effort in game one behind Jeremy Burright.
Donohue admits that his team came into Saturday’s doubleheader with full confidence that his group would walk away with two wins.
“We carried over the momentum from the wins (on Thursday) against Lane,” he said. “We kind of just showed up and said ‘lets do what we do and get after them’.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Burright pitched five innings, allowing one hit and one run before his team 10-runned the Roadrunners in game one of the doubleheader. He struck out five batters, improving his ERA to 1.61.
Corey Davis (1-0), the team’s regular catcher, pitched game two and pitched a complete game. Second baseman Nic Fowler helped Davis by going 4 for 4 and is batting .452 (14 for 31) on the season. Fowler moved from being a starting pitcher to second after suffering elbow problems in his pitching arm.
Asked what has changed in his team’s demeanor over the past week (the group has gone 5-1 since April 13), the coach said, “Practices have gotten so much better. We don’t need an outstanding performance for our guys to win.
We just need to play clean ball, and that’s been working for us.”
As a whole, the team has lifted its batting average to .275 and the squad’s earned run average is at 3.81 over 205.67 innings, according to the team’s online statistics.
For the second time this season, the Saints play the Chemeketa Community College Storm Saturday at Oslund Field starting at 1 p.m.
According to Donohue, Burright will take the mound in game one but he is undecided who will pitch game two for the Saints.
In game one, Donohue expects that the Storm will start sophomore ace Grady Wood (5-1) with a 1.13 era. Wood pitched a complete game and struck out six batters back on April 6 against the Saints.
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