Baseball Capitalizes on Multiple FIU Mistakes to Take Opener

Friday, March 29

Boca Raton, Fla.

6:30 PM

Florida Atlantic

17-9, 0

FIU

11-15, 0

FIU

Florida Atlantic

Photo by: JC Ridley/Owlpix.com

Baseball Capitalizes on Multiple FIU Mistakes to Take Opener

3/29/2019 9:43:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

BOCA RATON, Fla. – A pitcher's duel through five opened up on four FIU errors in two late innings to push Florida Atlantic University baseball to a 7-1 win on Friday night to open the Conference USA series at FAU Baseball Stadium.

Quotable

Head Coach John McCormack:
"That's a really good way to start a weekend off. I thought that Blake (Sanderson) did an excellent job keeping us in the game early and we were able to put some balls in play hard, capitalize on a few of their mistakes. I thought the guys were ready to play. On top of that, we turned (three) double plays, got us out of a couple of innings. Really good job, really proud of the guys."

Full Opening Statement from Coach Mac

The Turning Point
Each team came up with a solo home run in the early going, by Mitchell Hartigan for FAU (17-9, 6-1 C-USA) in the second, and Javier Valdes of FIU (11-15, 2-5 C-USA) in the fourth. With two outs in the home fifth, Francisco Urbaez drew a two-out walk, and came all the way around to score on Andru Summerall's double down the rightfield line for a lead the Owls would not relinquish.

The Finish
The Valdes home run was all Blake Sanderson would allow across in what would be a seven-inning stint, while three FIU errors in the sixth led to two FAU runs, and the Panthers had another miscue the seventh in a three-run Owl frame (additionally, Bobby Morgensen and Joe Montes had back-to-back RBI singles). Michael Schuler allowed just one hit in the final two innings and was helped out by one of three FAU double plays to close things out.

The Arms / The Gloves

Sanderson improved to a league-best 6-0
He scattered just four FIU hits, walked one and struck out four. Besides the home run, only one Panther reached second base against him
The first double play was a lineout on a leaping catch by Francisco Urbaez in the fifth, doubling off a leadoff single
The second was Joe Montes to Urbaez to Gunnar Lambert to end the sixth
And finally, in the eighth, Jacob Josey made a nice play up the middle ranging to his left, stepped on the bag, and threw on to Lambert to end that frame
Urbaez came up with an amazing play starting the ninth, on a full-out dive in shallow right-center shifting against lefthanded batter Austin Shenton:

ICYMI: Urbaez's diving catch to get the first out of 9th. pic.twitter.com/CJDm7IckKT
— FAU Baseball (@FAU_Baseball) March 30, 2019

The Bats

Six of the Owls' 10 hits came in the bottom portion of the lineup: two from Morgensen and Montes, one each by Hartigan and Josey
Eric Rivera also added two hits
Urbaez had a single, two walks and scored twice
Hartigan's home run off FIU ace Logan Allen cleared the scoreboard in rightfield on the fly
Owl hitters only struck out five times against Allen, who had 61 in 36 2/3 coming in. He hadn't had less than eight in a start this year
Also, Allen hadn't given up an earned run since Feb. 15, and the Owls got two against him Friday

What's Next

Game two Saturday begins at 4 p.m., with the starting pitching matchup of the Owls' Mike Ruff and Nick MacDonald of FIU. Get tickets by calling 1-866-FAU-OWLS or visiting baseball's ticket website.