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By Cody Swartz, GoMessiah.com reporter
Grantham, PA - The Messiah Falcons dropped their home opener to the Franklin and Marshall Diplomats (3-3) on Tuesday afternoon, losing a 3-1 contest. The Falcons (1-4) were plagued by runners stranded on base and a pair of costly errors, wasting a solid all-around pitching performance from starter
Tory Arnesen and a pair of relievers.
Messiah outhit the Diplomats 10 to 7 but stranded 13 runners, leaving the bases loaded in the first inning and two runners on base on three other occasions. The Falcons appeared to be putting together a rally in the bottom of the ninth inning when junior
Paul Mellinger singled and senior
Ryan Brown worked a two-out walk, but a harmless pop up to first base ended the day.
Meanwhile, the Falcons' pitching staff turned in by far its best team performance of the season. Arnesen threw six strong innings, giving up just one earned run. He walked only one batter, struck out four, and induced a high number of ground ball outs in keeping Messiah competitive.
“I thought Tory rebounded very nicely,” DeRiggs said. “He had much better command, his velocity was slightly up, and he's getting closer to the Tory of last year. He's still not there yet but we were encouraged by his effort today.”
The Diplomats scored one run in each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings off Arnesen, with each of the last two being on costly two-out errors. Arnesen (0-2) was charged with the loss.
At the plate, Messiah had plenty of opportunities, but couldn't make the most of them.
John Brubaker turned in a productive day at the plate, going 2-for-3 with two walks and Brown reached base four times as well. In all, seven of the eight Falcons starters collected hits in the game, but the team just couldn't piece together any timely hits with men on base. Twice Messiah had men wiped out on the basepaths on pickoffs, adding to the frustration.
“Baseball is a funny game,” DeRiggs said. “When you have opportunities early in the game and don't take advantage of it, many times it comes back to haunt you. The story of the game was that we didn't execute defensively and even offensively, we had 11 hits but we didn't have them at the most opportune time.”
Not to be forgotten from Messiah's loss was the fine performances in relief from junior
Galen Halteman and senior
Davin Okerblom. Halteman, a walk-on to this year's team, threw two perfect innings, recording two strikeouts. Okerblom added a perfect inning of his own, meaning the relief corps faced the minimum nine batters in three innings.
“I'm not surprised with them anymore; I'm just pleased,” DeRiggs said. “Galen is really settling into his role nicely as a middle relief role, and he's been very effective. Davin also has performed exceedingly well and we are going to depend on him more as the year goes on. We were encouraged by all three pitchers today.”
The Falcons play again on Wednesday, traveling to Aberdeen, Maryland to take on Stevenson University. Game time for this contest is slated for 3:00 p.m.
