No. 17 Baseball Ends Regular Season With Sweep Against Union

ATHENS, Tenn.- For the final time in the 2024 regular season, the 17th-ranked baseball team played a doubleheader at Athens Insurance Stadium. The opponent in the doubleheader was the same from the day before, the Union Commonwealth University Bulldogs. 

Game One:

Tennessee Wesleyan exploded for 15 runs in game one. Four of the runs scored in the first. Braxton Turner was hit by a pitch to get on first. Turner scored on a double by Marco Martinez. Martinez went on to score on a Evan Magill single. Cayle Webster brought home the third and fourth runs with his home run scoring courtesy runner Hagen Escoto.

Four more runs scored in the fourth for the home Bulldogs. With the bases loaded by Corbin Shaw, Carson Ford and Turner, Jack Stevens hit a fly out that turned into a sacrifice fly when Shaw scored. Martinez took another runner of the base as his single scored Ford. Turner and Martinez were the last runs of the inning, scoring on a Magill single to move the score to 8-1. 

In the fifth inning, Shaw opened the offense with a solo home run. Turner kept the offense going with a walk, standing on first as he watched Jack Stevens' contact with the ball fly over the wall for a two-run home run, moving the score to 11-1. The inning ended with the team leading 12-1 after Martinez scored on a Magill double. 

Runs 13, 14, and 15 went on the board in the sixth inning. Turner hit a home run with Kruise Newman and Dante Leach on base, making the score 15-1 as the game ended in the seventh due to the run rule. 

Magill finished the game with four RBIs while Turner and Stevens had three RBIs, and Martinez and Webster had two RBIs. Jake Sergent had five strikeouts in three innings while Blake Peyton, who got the pitching win, had nine strikeouts in four innings.

Game Two:

TWU raced out to a 5-0 lead in the second game. 

Cody McGill hit a home run in the second inning, a two run shot that brought Webster to home plate as well. In the third inning, Martinez brought home Stevens from third, who opened the third with a triple. Daniel Stewart made the score 4-0 when his sinle scored Magill. The five-run advantage for the team popped in the fourth, a solo home run by Stevens. 

A momentum shift occurred as Union scored six runs over the fifth and sixth inning to move ahead 6-5. Cody McGill tied the game in the bottom of the sixth of the seven inning game but the opposing Bulldogs scored a run in the top of the seventh to take a 7-6 lead and set up a potentially dramatic bottom seventh. 

In the bottom of the seventh, Martinez earned a walk. Leach replaced him on base as a pinch runner. The pinch runner was only on base for moments as Magill sent a ball over the wall for a walk-off two-run home run, giving Tennessee Wesleyan a 8-7 win to complete the series sweep.

Up next for the Bulldogs (33-15, 23-7 AAC) is the AAC Tournament. The team's first team in the tournament will be on Wednesday, May 1 at 4:00 p.m.