No. 2 Baseball Crush Royals

Athens, Tenn.- The baseball team, ranked as the No. 2 team in the NAIA, returned to Athens Insurance Stadium on Friday. The weather forced a few changes to the schedule, moving the team's doubleheader against the Johnson University Royals a day early. TWU cruised to two big victories, producing 37 runs on the day over the two games.

Game One:

The first lead of the day went to the Royals, who scored two runs in the top of the first inning. In the bottom of the first, Dan Sayre put the Bulldogs on the board. Sayre got on base with a walk, stealing second and third over the next several pitches. Parker Stinnett's single to right field cut the lead in half as Sayre jotted across home plate. Johnson scored two more runs in the second to move their lead to 4-1. Twenty-one runs were scored over the next innings, 20 of which were scored by Tennessee Wesleyan.

In the third inning, the Bulldogs took over the lead. Cody McGill started the wave of runs with a solo home run. Stinnett got on base with a walk, stealing second and third to make getting home fairly simple. The runner went home on an Evan Magill sacrifice fly to cut the deficit to one run. The team took the lead on a two-run home run by Cayle Webster, bringing in Braxton Turner's courtesy runner Aiden McClary in the process. A solo home run by Andre Tarver gave the team a 6-4 lead at the end of the inning.

Martinez hit a homer in the fourth inning to keep the inning alive and the streak of runs going. Stinnett, getting on base via a hit by pitch, scored from second after stealing second and a Turner double. Magill gave the team a 9-5 lead when McClary scored on his single. In the fifth inning, TWU scored nine runs, highlighted by three-run home runs by Sayre and Carson Ford. Three runs in the sixth, coming from a Jacob Tolson single scoring Cade Bochtler, a McClary run on a Stinnett's fielder's choice, and a Ford RBI single scoring Preston Welchel moved the score to 21-5, forcing the game to end early in seven inning due to the run rule.

Thomas Wilhite got the win on the mound.

Game Two:

Two home runs gave the Bulldogs an early lead. Sayre hit a solo shot over the left field wall and Martinez followed moments later with a two-run shot over the left field wall, bringing McGill home in the process of making the score 3-0. TWU added to the lead in the second inning.

With Magill and Webster standing on a base, Tarver hit a single, scoring Magill and moving Webster to third. Ford hit a bomb over the right field wall, bringing in Webster and Tarver as well to expand the lead to 7-1. McGill hit a single to left field, making Sayre the final run of the inning after getting on base via a double to make the score 8-1. Tarver added another RBI in the third inning, bringing in Magill on a single to make the lead eight runs.

In the fourth inning, the Bulldogs score four more runs. Bochlter became one of the runs off a Magill single while Stinnett was the second run of the inning on McClary's single. Tarver was responsible for the remaining two runs of the inning, bringing both Magill and McClary home with a double to move the lead to 13-1. The game's final score of 16-2 was reached in the fifth inning, where McGill hit a two-run homer to score Sayre and Ayden Mansfield scored on a McClary fielder's choice.

Gage Vailes had five strikeouts in the pitching win.

The teams will meet on Saturday to conclude the series with a single game. The game in Athens Insurance Stadium begins at 1:00 p.m.