Rho (5-for-5), Sanders (8 RBI) Lead CMS Baseball to 17-5 Win over Whittier

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Brandon Rho was 5-for-5 with a homer and a double, and Julian Sanders had eight RBI, including two homers in a nine-run eighth inning, as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps baseball team took a 17-5 win over Whittier on Friday in the first game of a three-game series.

The win improves CMS to 20-14 on the year, marking its first 20-win season since the 2011 team finished 23-17, while also pushing the Stags over .500 in conference play at 10-9. CMS is now one game behind Cal Lutheran (11-8) and a half-game behind Redlands (10-8) in a three-way battle for fourth place in the league with five games to play. Whittier falls to 3-32 overall and 2-17 in league play with the loss. 

CMS led throughout, but Whittier plated two runs in the top of the eighth inning to make the score 8-5 and bring the tying run to the plate. In the bottom half, though, the Stags put it away with nine runs to enforce the 10-run rule. The inning began with the fifth hit from Rho, a double into the left-center field gap, before he was replaced by pinch-runner Kallen Mueller (who came up later in the inning and was hit by a pitch). 

Sanders then followed with a moon shot to left field over the trees and onto Claremont Avenue to make it a 10-5 CMS lead. Nick Wilson followed with a solo shot to go back-to-back, after just missing a bid for a homer that went about 10 feet foul on the previous pitch. Carson Bridges added an RBI single to make it 12-5 and after an error kept the inning alive, Sanders went yard for the second time in the eighth inning, a three-run shot to end the game. 

Sanders also drove in the first two runs for the Stags, the first on an RBI groundout in the first and the second on an RBI single in the third when his towering fly ball fell into the Bermuda Triangle behind shortstop untouched. Tyler Shaw had a two-out RBI double in the fourth to make it 4-0 after two Whittier errors put runners on. 

After the Poets got back within 4-2 in the top of the fifth, Rho hit a solo shot to lead off the bottom of the fifth, and Jack Potter added a two-run blast to make it 7-2 in favor of the Stags. Sanders picked up his third RBI of the day on a sacrifice fly in the sixth to make it 8-3, before tacking on five more RBI with two long balls in the eighth. 

Jarrett Korson went six innings to get the win and improve to 7-2 on the year for the Stags. Evan Kelly ended the game 3-for-5, while Wilson (2-for-5) and Marco Castillo (2-for-6) each had multi-hit games. 

The three-game series between the teams will conclude tomorrow with a doubleheader at Whittier, before CMS closes out the regular season next weekend with a series against Pomona-Pitzer, including a home doubleheader on Saturday.