ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – The Bard College baseball team snapped a four-game losing streak with a doubleheader sweep of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, 4-1 and 3-0, on Saturday.Bard pitchers allowed only an unearned run all day - in the first inning of Game 1 - and followed that with 13 innings of scoreless ball.Steve Marotta (1-1) pitched a four-hit complete game (seven innings) in Game 1, retiring nine in a row at one point. The Raptors trailed 1-0 after a pair of errors in the top of the first, but they got it back in the bottom of the inning, when David Schlosser walked and later scored on a two-out single by Alec Montecalvo.Chris Blake, making his first collegiate start, tripled to right to open the bottom of the second and later scored on a wild pitch to give Bard a 2-1 lead after two.
In the fourth,
Quinn McInerney's RBI single plated Schlosser to make it 3-1, and in the fifth,
Adam Carafotes drove in
Preston Gittelson with a triple to right field to make it 4-1.
Marotta was efficient, throwing 81 pitches - no walks, no strikeouts, one hit batsman. Blake went 2-for-2 with a walk.
Jared Muraca (Deerfield, NY) took the loss, giving up four runs on seven hits with four walks and two strikeouts. He's 1-2.
Freshman
John Wendt got the start in Game 2, and he picked up where Marotta left off. After allowing a single in the first, he retired 15 batters in a row. He gave up just two hits over six innings, walking one and striking out four.
Alex Bunnell got the save after working out of a two-on, one-out top of the seventh by striking out Poly's last two batters to end the game.
Bard (5-4) got single runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth. In the fourth, a line double by Carafotes created a threat, and he later scored on a one-out single by
Jeff Goldrosen to make it 1-0.
In the fifth,
Quinn McInerney led off the frame with a triple to right, and he scored on a first-pitch one-out single by
Jack Hawke. It was 2-0.
In the sixth, Carofotes hit a bloop double and later scored on a two-out single by
Matt Lasky. Carafotes went 2-for-2 with two runs scored. Montecalvo has an eight-game hitting streak.
Ryan Kelly (Williston Park, NY) allowed three runs over 5.2 innings on seven hits and a walk. He struck out two for the Wildcats, 5-8.
After three straight weekends at home, Bard next heads to the Mid-Atlantic for a five-game Spring Break trip. It'll start Monday with a single game at University of Mary Washington, the 17th-ranked team in the country, according to the latest poll.
Follow that game right here via Live Stats. In fact, you'll be able to follow all of the games on the Spring Break trip right here.