BASEBALL

The Forester baseball team used the latter innings to post a 7-3 decision over Bethel (8-13, 4-5) Monday afternoon at Jenkins Stadium. It was win No. 2 of the three-game series. With three series under their belts, HU (11-7) is off to a great start in Crossroads League play with a 7-2 record for second place in the standings.

The afternoon got off to a slow start as the scoreboard stood at zeros until the fifth when Bethel eventually touched home on a wild pitch but not before a bizarre sequence of events that included a Pilot runner called out for passing a preceding runner.

Despite the chaos of the fifth, Huntington stuck with it to finally see the payoff in the seventh when they led-off with a walk and then pounded out three hits, including Ian McCutcheon’s RBI-single, after which Nick Davit’s drove in a second run on a sacrifice fly and McCutcheon scored on a wild pitch. The tide had turned as HU captured the lead at 3-1 and showed no signs of slowing down.

Daniel Lichty opened the eighth by landing on first on a misplayed grounder and then came around to score shortly after on Jarret Gray’s three-bagger. Jacob Hansen worked one of nine HU walks and with another boost from the Pilots by way of a second error, two more runners made their way around the bases. Gustavo Bonilla put down a sacrifice bunt to bring Huntington’s run total to four in the inning for a 7-1 tilt.

The Pilots would get two back in the home half of the frame but it was too little too late as Huntington cruised to the win.

After Mason Shinabery tossed the first 4.2 frames, Caleb Landrum came on in relief to pick up his first win of the season. In 4.1 innings of work, Landrum gave up four hits, two unearned runs and a walk while striking out four.

HU finished with seven hits by seven different Foresters with Wilson collecting two RBI in addition to his single in the seventh.

Donovan Clark had two of his team’s four steals. To date, the Foresters have swiped a jaw-dropping 52 bags. As a team, they currently rank 4th nationally in stolen bases per game (2.82) behind Collin Landrum (.875) and Clark (.765) who rank 2nd and 6th in the NAIA individual rankings respectively.

Next up for Frame’s crew is a three-game series starting on Friday at Grace.