Keystone Box Score -
Northwood Box Score
Ft. Pierce, Fl - The Messiah Falcons (3-7) dropped two separate nine-inning contests on Tuesday, falling 4-0 to the Keystone Giants in game one and 6-4 to the Northwood Seahawks in game two.
The Falcons' bats were silent, registering just four total runs on the day. Messiah never led in the first game, going down early, and later blew a 3-0 lead in the nightcap.
Senior
Nate Roten received the start in the first game. He threw six innings, pitching into the seventh. Roten allowed just three hits and struck out seven. He walked eight and threw a pair of wild pitches, but he kept the Falcons in the game against one of the toughest Division III teams in the nation. Roten (0-1) received the pitching loss for the game.
“They're a World Series finalist from last year, having won 38 games, and I thought Nate was effectively wild,” DeRiggs said. “I was very pleased with Nate's performance. The eight walks are something we need to improve on, but he had a lot of strikeouts, he showed a lot of poise, and he's also been out of action for the last two years, so we know he is still coming along. We hope that he will round into the shape that he was in coming into his sophomore season. It was a very encouraging performance against an excellent ballclub.”
Meanwhile, opposing pitcher Michael Mezaros took a perfect game into the fifth inning against Messiah before senior
Ryan Brown worked a walk to become the team's first base runner of the game. Sophomore
Jacob Sprengle broke up the no-hit bid with a line drive single to right field. The Falcons couldn't muster a run however, and in fact, didn't produce another hit for the remainder of the contest.
“The first game, we were simply overpowered by an excellent pitcher that throws 88-89 miles per hour,” DeRiggs said. “We had just one hit, and even though we had several hard-hit ones, we were simply overpowered. He was a better pitcher than we were hitters, and he is on a very good team.”
In the second game, sophomore
Jon Lapp took the hill. Lapp pitched 6.1 innings against the hard-hitting Seahawks, allowing three earned runs. He exited with two men on base in the seventh inning, but senior relief pitcher
Davin Okerblom came in and got two quick outs to escape the jam.
“I thought Lapp had a very nice outing today,” DeRiggs said. “When Lapp gets in rhythm today, he's very effective. He rebounded very nicely. He had some explosion with the ball coming out of his hand, and he looked more like the Lapp that was the Rookie of the Year for us last year.”
The Falcons' offense gave the team three runs early on RBI hits by freshman
Derek Drake, Brown, and Sprengle, but stalled in the middle innings, collecting just one hit from the fourth through seventh innings.
Messiah's 3-2 lead disappeared when the Seahawks capitalized on a seventh-inning error and a trio of singles, taking a 4-3 lead that they wouldn't relinquish. The Seahawks added to their leads with a run apiece in the eighth and ninth innings, both unearned on costly errors by the Falcons.
“I thought it was disappointing that we made three fundamental errors that cost us in the second game,” DeRiggs said. “I thought we should be at the point where we are limiting the errors, especially with how hard we have worked on fundamentals this year.”
Messiah managed to put two men on base in each of the last two innings, even plating a run in the bottom of the ninth, but a 6-4 loss was the final story.
“The problem was when we had a 3-0 lead, we didn't protect it like we should have,” DeRiggs said. “We had an opportunity to put the game out of reach and we weren't able to do so. When you're ahead 3-0, you need to capitalize on that and widen the gap, and we didn't do that.”
Lapp (0-1) took the pitching loss for the second game.
Senior
Sam Tajiri led the offense on the day with three singles and a hit by pitch, reaching the base in four of his eight plate appearances. Junior
Matt Turman, Drake, Brown, Sprengle, and senior
John Brubaker each collected multiple hits.
Messiah picks up again tomorrow, playing St. Scholastica University for the Falcons' fifth game in three days. Game time for this matchup is slated for 11:00 a.m.
