KOKOMO, Ind. – The Earlham College baseball team continued its quest for a Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference championship with a 9-8 win over Franklin College in the winner's bracket on Friday.
The Quakers move on to win the winner's bracket, and they will face the winner of the loser's bracket on Saturday at 2:30 pm. Franklin will be playing Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology at 11:30 to decide the bracket winner.
Aidan Talarek earned his eighth win of the season on the mound with five innings pitched and four strikeouts with five runs surrendered. Kokomo native
Nate Hemmerich pitched 2.2 innings in relief and tallied two strikeouts with
Jacob Renner earning his second save of the tournament with 1.1 innings.
Christian Lancianese had a productive day on the basepath with two runs scored on three hits.
Cameron McCabe tallied two hits for a .667 batting average on the afternoon.
Easton Embry led the lineup with two RBI from a double in the fifth inning.
Maxwell Fries put a ball in play in the bottom of the first inning that was unsuccessfully fielded by the Grizzlies, which brought
Christian Lancianese home for the score from second base.
Franklin scored two runs in the top of the second inning, and the Quakers responded in the bottom of the third with a single from
Nathan Lancianese, and a sac fly from Fries.
Zach Swearingen stole third base in the bottom of the fourth inning, and took advantage of an error on the throw to get up and sprint home for the score.
Franklin scored on a solo homer and an RBI-double in the top of the fifth inning.
With runners on second and third, Embry hit a double to right-center field to score both and put the Quakers back on top in the contest. Embry reached home from a sac fly from Swearingen later in the inning.
After a Franklin run in the top of the sixth, Fries put another ball in play that gave an unearned run to the Quakers with an error. The final run of the game came from a sac fly by
Devin Basley in the sixth inning.
Renner weathered a 2-RBI single in the top of the eighth inning to keep the Quakers ahead, and retired the first three batters of the ninth inning.