Crohan's Pitching, Whitley's Two-Run Homer Lead Eagles
ROCK HILL, SC—Matt Crohan had his best outing of the young season with six innings of one-hit shutout pitching and Chase Whitley hit a two-run home run to lead the Winthrop baseball team to a 8-4 win over the Rhode Island Rams
on Friday afternoon at The Winthrop Ballpark.
With the win, Winthrop improves to 6-4 while Rhode Island drops to 1-6. Crohan picked up his second win of the season while URI southpaw Steve Moyers took the loss to fall to 0-3 this season.The series will resume on
Saturday at
3 p.m. and
on Sunday at
12 noon.
Crohan, a lefthander, gave up his only hit when Jordan Powell beat out a ground ball to shortstop for an infield single.
'I thought we played extremely well from an offensive standout point," said Winthrop head coach
Tom Riginos. "The name of the game today was the key two-out RBIs. I thought Matt did a nice job out of the gate. He had his three-pitch mix going today."
Crohan and Moyers were locked in a scoreless duel until Winthrop got on the board with a single run in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Anthony Paulsen led off the inning with an infield single, advanced to second on a ground out and went to third on a wild pitch before scoring on a line drive single to center by
Grant English.
The Eagles opened some daylight in the sixth inning with three more runs on five hits to take a 4-0 lead. Paulsen led off again with a single and moved around to third on a single by
Jace Whitley and scored on English's second RBI single to center. Whitley came home on a base hit by
Mark Lowrie.
Casey Parker looped a soft single into right centerfield that brought home English from second to end the scoring.
Rhode Island got on the board in the seventh against Eagle reliever
Thad Harris when Chris Hess drove a two-run homer to left centerfield after Ryan Olmo had reached on a fielding error to cut Winthrop's lead in half at 4-2.
But the Eagles responded in the bottom half of the inning as Whitley capped a three-run seventh inning with a two-out two run blast to right field that put Winthrop ahead 7-2 The first run of the inning came after
Tyler Asbill reached base on an error to lead off the bottom seventh going and then moved around to third on a single to right by
Mitch Spires. Asbill scored on a double play groundout by Paulsen.
Winthrop tacked on its final run in the eighth inning with the help of two Rhode Island errors.
The Rams scored two more runs in the ninth off Harris when Matt Figuero lifted a high fly over the leftfield wall.
