Home Opener: CMU

First off, I am the blogger for Bowling Green baseball's athletic department, so during games if you go to the website click on the link for the game. The link should be to a live blog that should look something like this. Come join me for all the home games!

Well, today was a defensive struggle for Bowling Green while Central had no complaints, capitalizing by scoring eight runs in the first five innings.

3/24/2010

Bowling Green: 7

Central Michigan: 12

Box Score

Game Recap

- Bowling Green threw out to the mound to start the game freshman right-handed pitcher Cody Apthorpe. Unfortunately for Apthorpe, he had a lot of trouble hitting the strike zone today. His stat line for the day was brutal, in three innings pitched he gave up six runs, only four of which were earned, off of five hits. He had three walks and only two strikeouts.

- Bowling Green threw seven pitchers today, all except for one went for at least a full inning. Today was just a day to get a lot of guys work to be prepared for the weekend home series against NIU.

- The most distressing part of today though were the errors, both defensively and baserunning. Only seven of CMU's twelve runs were earned, and BG had three critical defensive errors, all of which leading to runs being scored by the Chippewas. In fact, that's a tied game if BG played a perfect defensive game.

- Baserunning errors killed BG too, in particular there were two crucial errors on the same play that killed the Falcons best chance at coming back. Down 12-6 in the seventh inning the Falcons had runners on second and third with no outs when Clay Duncan ripped a shot down to the third baseman. The runner at third took off for home when he probably should of stayed, and the third baseman threw out the runner at home, but the worst part was when the runner at second couldn't decide whether to stay at second or try to get to third but ended up getting caught in between. The double play absolutely killed the rally for BGSU and pretty much ended the game right then and there.

- TJ Blanton continued his hitting hot streak today going two for three with one RBI.

- Taylor Rhoades had his first collegiate hit today.

Verdict?

A home opening win against a conference opponent (even though it was out-of-conference) would've been nice but it was by no means necessary. This was game five of eight in nine days so today was just a game where pitching was just too thin to win. At least Bowling Green got some good reps in on the home turf, the fans got to watch the ball fly off the bat, and now the attention focuses on the start of the MAC season (officially) with Northern Illinois (5-14, 0-0). I will be hoping to post a preview of Northern Illinois by tomorrow night or Friday at the latest.