MARTIN, Tenn.– The University of Tennessee at Martin baseball team clinched their first series win of the season with a clutch finish to defeat Brown, 3-2.
After trailing 2-1 heading into the home half of the seventh, the Skyhawks (3-3) responded with two answered runs to close out the game.
The UT Martin pitching staff was phenomenal, allowing just one earned run on four hits with zero walks issued and 11 strikeouts. Redshirt senior Eric Steensma was electric in his first start of the season, going six innings with one earned run allowed on four hits while recording a career-high seven strikeouts. Choyce Diffey threw a scoreless seventh inning in his team-high third appearance of the season while Jeb Bartle (1-0) earned the victory – going six-up and six-down in the final two innings with three punchouts.
Five different Skyhawk batters landed a base hit as Zac Rice, Andrew Fernandez, Will Smith, Mac Danford and Jalen Fithian propelled the offense. Fithian doubled, Rice drove in the game-tying run and Danford scored the go-ahead run on an error in the bottom of the eighth.
Smith was responsible for the first run of the game, scoring on a fielding error to give UT Martin the early lead in the bottom of the second.
Steensma was perfect through 2.1 innings and retired 14 of the first 16 batters he faced (with one of those two hitters reaching via an error). Steensma whiffed the first two batters in the fifth inning before an unearned run crossed the plate and evened the score at 1-all.
The Bears were able to take a brief 2-1 lead in the sixth before Diffey breezed through a 13-pitch frame in the seventh. After Rice’s RBI single in the bottom half, Bartle did not allow a ball out of the infield in the top of the eighth.
Danford worked a seven-pitch walk to lead off the eighth and moved up 90 feet on a Cameron Brady sacrifice bunt. After Fithian reached on an error to put runners on the corners, Danford trotted home on a failed pickoff attempt to nudge the Skyhawks ahead, 3-2.
Bartle was lights out in the ninth as the sophomore righty induced a groundout before striking out the last two batters of the contest.
The Skyhawks will go for the sweep tomorrow as the game time being pushed up to 11 a.m.
