DENVER – Colorado Mesa is the No. 1-ranked team in NCAA Division II.
But, for now anyway, Colorado Mesa is No. 2 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
That's because, on the strength of a 7-0 opening-game victory and a dramatic 4-3, ninth-inning win in the nightcap against Regis on Sunday, MSU Denver extended its winning streak to a school-record 14 games and took over first place (just barely) in the league standings.
"Keeping guys locked in takes a lot," Metropolitan State University of Denver coach
Ryan Strain said. "You've got to learn how to do that. We've got a lot of new players, and they're not used to winning this many games in a row. It's a school record.
"A program like Mesa is kind of used to winning a bunch of games and knows how to handle it. It's a learning curve for us and I think the guys are doing a good job with it. We've got to continue to play fundamentally-sound baseball, continue to throw strikes and hopefully compete at the plate."
MSU Denver (20-7 overall, 13-2 RMAC) pushed past Colorado Mesa (25-5, 13-3) after the Mavericks were surprised by Colorado Christian on Sunday. While the Mesa-Christian series is over, the Roadrunners are assured of being in no worse than a first-place tie for the league lead for a few days after wrapping up the series with Regis on Monday in a 4 p.m. game.
Trailing all game long in the nightcap after giving up three runs in the top of the first inning, MSU Denver – riding a 7 1/3-inning, one-hit relief effort from
TJ Egloff (Brighton, Colo./Brighton) -- rallied for a tie and forced the seven-inning game to extra frames.
Draven Adame (Lamar, Colo./Lamar) led off the ninth inning with a triple, then
Zach Walsh (Austin, Texas/Vista Ridge) walked and
Jake Kistaitis (Omaha, Neb./Millard West) was walked intentionally, loading the bases with no outs and setting up force plays. Regis (8-20, 3-12) then employed a five-infielder, two-outfielder defensive alignment to try to get force outs at the plate.
MSU Denver's
Ty Lightley (Littleton, Colo./Dakota Ridge) sent a chopper over the pitcher's head to the right of second baseman Mickey Meinhofer. With his momentum carrying toward shortstop, Meinhofer threw home, but the throw tailed up the third-base line. Catcher Kennedy Phillips tried to keep his foot on the plate to record the force out, and the throw was in time, but the home-plate umpire ruled that Phillips had pulled his foot off the plate while making the catch.
"I was sliding in and I saw the foot on (the plate), but I don't know when he caught the ball and where his foot was where he caught it," Adame said.
Said Strain: "You would have liked to see Ty make a little better contact, but he got enough to get the defender moving. I still felt good with the top of the order coming up (had Adame been called out), but I'm glad we didn't have to wait and see."
Adame, who had homered earlier in the game, nearly ended it with his leadoff triple in the ninth, which carried to the fence in right center.
"I knew he was going to come with a curveball right there, just because that's what they'd been throwing me all day," Adame said. "I thought to myself, sit back and hit it to the right side of the field. I knew I got all of it and I wasn't sure if it was going out, but it felt good. I just hit it to the deepest part of the park."
Reliever
Taylor Petersen (Gilbert, Ariz./Highland) (4-0) had pitched out of a sticky situation in relief of Egloff in the top of the ninth and wound up with the victory after leaving the bases loaded.
Meanwhile, Egloff had inherited a 3-1 deficit when he took the mound in the second inning in relief of
John Badgett (Arvada, Colo./Arvada West) and promptly pitched seven no-hit innings. The only hit Egloff allowed was an infield single to lead off the ninth. The right-hander struck out four.
"It was good to finally have a good one," Egloff said. "I've been struggling the past few weeks so it was nice to get out there and finally do something well.
"I was pretty upset giving up a jam-shot single. I definitely expect to do things like this more often now."
Egloff made one start early this season, but he hadn't gone more than 3 1/3 innings in any outing. He slashed his ERA to 2.42 with the strong outing.
"We did talk about possibly starting Egloff anway, but we made the decision not to and have him backup either Logan (Soole, in the opening game) or Badge," Strain said. "We didn't need him behind Logan, but Badge didn't look right and we went to him."
Strain said he was hoping to get four or five innings from Egloff before turning it over to Petersen and possibly
Eric Cox (Aurora, Colo./Cherokee Trail).
"We thought maybe he was just better out of the bullpen," Strain said of Egloff. "Because he's a bulldog. He's a competitor. I think he just got over-amped that first (start). Hopefully he can learn from that. That's the first time he's gone that many innings in a long time. That was nice to see and it's encouraging moving forward."
MSU Denver scratched back from its 3-0 deficit with an RBI double by
Matt Malkin (Broomfield, Colo./Monarch) in the first inning, Adame's second-inning homer, and then an RBI groundout by
Cade Peters (Stockton, Calif./St. Mary's) in the sixth, setting the stage for the extra-innings dramatics.
How good was Egloff? Good enough that Soole's complete-game three-hitter in the opener was probably only MSU Denver's second-best pitching performance of the day. Backed by Adame's two-run double and homers by Peters and Kistaitis, Soole (4-2) struck out six without walking a batter.
"It was good," Soole said. "I had better control of my curveball. The umpire had a really good strike zone. And our defense came up huge. I don't have that performance without our defense. Ty (at third base), (shortstop Zach) Paschke and (second baseman Zach) Walsh all made great plays and Jake (at first) had some awesome stretches over there, too. I don't pitch that well without those guys."
Soole now has a 2.39 ERA – the staff ERA stands at 3.43 – and has 45 strikeouts and just 10 walks in 37 2/3 innings.
"He really threw well," Strain said. "He just competes. Every pitch he throws is at the knees. He throws it where he wants to, and he's got a pretty good breaking ball. And Draven (MSU Denver's catcher) did an unbelievable job today behind the plate."
Adame caught all 16 innings, and was still spry enough to make a run-saving grab of an errant Petersen pitch when the left-hander stumbled with the bases-loaded in the top of the ninth of the nightcap.
"The pitching staff this entire year has been unreal," Adame said. "They keep us in games, and as long as they do that I think we're going to end up winning a majority of our games. Our defense has been playing great, too."
Meanwhile, the Roadrunners roll on.
The opening-game win broke the previous school mark of 12 straight victories, which included the final three games of the 2001 season and the first nine games of 2002.
"In the beginning of it, you're just trying to scrap and win games," Strain said. "We had a couple of tough losses to start the conference (schedule). But then we got a couple wins, and guys have continued to pitch well and swing the bats well. You never really see it coming, but with this team, it's not surprising because I think we have the talent to be really good."
Adame put the winning streak in perspective.
"It's baseball," he said. "It's tough. One error can change the outcome of a game. But if we keep pitching well and keep hitting the ball well, we'll be OK. That's what we do."
