CMS Baseball Comes Back from Six Down to Defeat Carleton 12-11

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Cade Kritsch had a pinch-hit RBI single with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning to break an 11-11 tie and give the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps baseball team a 12-11 win over Carleton on Saturday afternoon at Arce Field.

Tyler Shaw was 4-for-5 with a leadoff homer, Julian Sanders was 4-for-5 with three RBI, and Brandon Rho was 3-for-4 with three RBI for the Stags, who improve to 12-9 on the season with the win. Carleton falls to 3-9 with the loss. 

CMS trailed by 8-2 and 10-4 scores, but rallied with six runs in the seventh to tie it. Starting pitcher Kiefer Lord, who came into the game with a 0.00 ERA, 27 strikeouts and two walks, took the mound to start the seventh and face the top of the order for the fourth time, and the Stags were able to jump on him for five straight hits. 

Shaw started it with a line drive single back off of Lord, and Rho followed with a double into left center to score Shaw and make it a 10-5 game. Nick Wilson then had an infield single to shortstop and Sanders ripped a double that one-hopped the wall in left-center to score Rho and put runners on second and third. Pinch-hitter Kieran Sidebotham then hit a line drive single over shortstop that plated one run, with Sanders coming home as well when the ball was misplayed in left to make the score 10-8. 

Two wild pitches tied the score at 10-10, before Carlton took an 11-10 lead in the eighth on another wild pitch. With runners on second and third and two outs, though, Paul Roche made a sliding catch in shallow right field to save two runs and keep it an 11-10 game heading into the bottom half. 

Shaw started off the bottom of the eighth with a line drive double into left-center and went to third on a wild pitch. With the infield drawn in, Rho then hit a bullet that hit off of the Carleton second baseman and ricocheted into shallow center to tie the score and put the go-ahead run on second.

Two outs later, Kritsch came up to pinch hit and went the other way with a fly ball down the right field line that Aaron Rice made a diving effort eerily similar to the play that Roche caught to end the top half. But in this case the ball popped out as Rice hit the ground, and Rho came home from second with the go-ahead run. 

Lalo Beron worked a quick top of the ninth to get the save, retiring the first two batters via strikeout and then ending the contest with a popup to shortstop. 

Shaw got things started on the very first pitch of the bottom of the first, when he hit a home run over the left-field fence off the hard throwing Lord. Rho then walked, and came home on an RBI single from Sanders as CMS took a 2-0 lead. A three-run home run from Jack Hommeyer capped a six-run fifth for Carleton that put them ahead 8-2, before Rho and Sanders had RBI singles in the bottom half. 

CMS will be back in action tomorrow for the final game of the weekend series when it takes on Puget Sound at 12 noon.