By Matt Present. BOONE, N.C. — App State scored six runs in the bottom of the seventh inning and brought the winning run to the plate in the ninth, but the Mountaineers were unable to take the lead in the late stages, falling 16-14 to Gardner-Webb on Saturday at Smith Stadium.
The contest featured almost everything you could imagine – 30 runs (each team scored six runs in the seventh inning), an immaculate inning from App State’s Caleb Marks and a four-homer, 12-RBI effort from Gardner-Webb’s Dale Francis Jr.
After falling behind 2-0 in the top of the first inning, App State (5-5) chased Gardner-Webb (6-6) starter, Jace Presley, before he had recorded an out in the bottom of the frame. App State grabbed the lead, pushing across runs on a John Kramer hit by pitch with the bases loaded (that ended Presley’s outing), followed by a walk to Kameron Miller to push in a second run. Miller walked four times in the contest after not drawing a single walk his freshman season.
Later in the inning, Braxton Church lifted a sac fly to put the Mountaineers ahead, 3-2. App State expanded its advantage to 7-3 at the end of four innings of play, highlighted by a Dillon Moquin RBI double in the third and a Church RBI double in the fourth.
After Marks gave up three runs over his first two innings, he bounced back to put up a pair of zeros in the third and fourth. The right-hander retired seven straight and one point and finished his outing with a season-high eight strikeouts. The outing was highlighted by an immaculate inning in the fourth, where he picked up two swinging strikeouts and a looking strikeout on four foul balls, three called strikes and two swinging strikes.
Gardner-Webb then broke through with 12 runs between the fifth and seventh innings, with Francis homering in all three frames (he also homered in the first). The redshirt-senior hit a two-run homer in the fifth, a three-run dinger in the sixth and a grand slam in a six-run seventh inning to push the Runnin’ Bulldogs lead to 15-8. He becomes the first player in Division I baseball this season to hit four home runs in a contest.
App State battled back with a six-spot of their own in the home seventh. The Black and Gold sent 12 men to the plate in the inning and worked four walks and got hit by three pitches, while Tyler Lichtenberger accounted for both hits in the inning including a two-run single to pull the Mountaineers to within a run.
Cody Little gave the Mountaineers some stability out of the bullpen, tossing the final 2.2 innings and escaping a bases loaded jam in the eighth inning with back-to-back strikeouts, after the Mountaineers intentionally walked Francis to force in a run.
In the bottom of the ninth, App State mounted a two-out rally. Tyler Figueroa walked, and Joseph Zamora singled to right, but Juan Correa grounded out to end the threat.
Church led the App State offense with three hits, while Kramer and Lichtenberger each drove in three runs in the contest. As a team, App State drew 13 walks and was hit by five pitches in the contest.
App State will face Gardner-Webb in the rubber game of the three-game series on Sunday at 1 p.m. at L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, N.C.
