Game 1
This season is going to give me a heart attack. Michigan wins its second in a row to open the season on a walk off single, this time in the 10th inning. Tyler Burgoon gets the win again, he’s now on pace to win 55 games this season, shattering the previous record by over 30. He pitched 4 innings of shut out relief, keeping Michigan close. He was definitely the player of the game. Maloney didn’t even warm anyone else up the down the stretch of the game. That’s the kind of confidence Rich has in Tyler.
McLouth was a hero again this time with the walk off single. He went 3-5 in the game with 2 RBIs. That puts him at .444 for the season with 7 total bases. Toth also did a great job working the count. He earned three walks in the game, including one to set up the winning run.
The one area that looked ugly though was baserunning. We were caught three times today. We’re slightly more aggressive this year, but it has yet to pay off. It’ll be interesting to see if we keep up this level of intensity on the base paths or if Maloney will change up his plan of attack.
As said previously, I’ll have the full recap up for the weekend sometime on Monday. We have a quick turn around as Michigan faces Cincinnati in about an hour and a half.
Game 2
Michigan finally decided to get ahead and stay ahead in this game. We gave Travis Smith a 3 run lead before he even took the mound, and that was all we needed. Smith and Matt Miller combined to give up only one run while striking out 16. Mike Dufek added a 3 run homer, his first of the year, as insurance late, but even that wasn’t needed.
Aaron Fitt at Baseball America described the Dufek bomb thusly:
[Mike Dufek] hit a Chris Dominguez-like bomb in the top of the seventh, a three-run shot that gave the Wolverines a 6-1 lead. This missile cleared the berm behind the right-field fence and bounced halfway up the chain-link fence that shields U.S. 19. And it got there in a hurry. I haven’t seen a ball hit that hard since Dominguez hit two massive homers for Louisville in the 2007 College World Series.
Of course Aaron screwed up the name of the player, citing Mike Spina (of Cincinnati) instead, but the description of the homerun was spot on with Dufek’s blast. In other hitting standouts, Nick Urban also had quite a day, just a home run shy of the cycle.
We’re off for the rest of the night. Tomorrow is St. John’s, who scored 12 on Iowa in the first inning in route to a 18-3 shellacking, yikes.
Posted under Baseball
Tags: cincinnati, jason mclouth, matt miller, mike dufek, nick urban, purdue, travis smith, tyler burgoon