The Navy baseball team pulled off a remarkable come-from-behind victory on Wednesday afternoon at the Henry S. Parker Athletic Complex in Salisbury, Md., utilizing a 12-run seventh inning to defeat Maryland Eastern Shore by an 18-11 score. The victory improves Navy’s record to 18-16, while UMES drops to 9-22.
The game started well for the Midshipmen, who had runners at the corners in the first inning but failed to capitalize, and the Hawks took advantage of that in the bottom of the frame when Dillon Oxyer hit an opposite-field solo home run to give Eastern Shore a 1-0 lead.
Navy’s Kyle Keller got the Mids on the board in the top of the third when he singled home Alex Smith, but UMES got two runs in the home half of the inning and Brian Cordell’s run-scoring single in the fourth inning increased the Hawks’ lead to 4-1.
Down 7-1 in the top of the seventh, Navy’s offense erupted, scoring 17 of their 18 runs in a two-inning span late in the game. The Mids collected 21 hits on the day, with six players registering multi-hit contests. Nick Burch, Logan Keller, and Kyle Rausch all had four-hit, four-RBI performances. Rausch alone tallied two extra-base hits and four RBI in the frame, and Keller drove him in with a double.
After Tyler Grenn went back out for another inning on the mound and retired the side in the bottom of the seventh, Navy tacked on five more runs in the eighth. Another bases-loaded, two-run single from Burch kickstarted the frame, while Raba doubled home Aguirre and Keller later smacked a single that scored Smith and Raba for the final Navy runs of the afternoon.
The Hawks tried to climb back into it during the bottom of the eighth with an Oxyer RBI double and an RBI single from Alex McCoy, but Adyn Lucero entered to get the final out of the inning and end the UMES rally. The Hawks then got two runs off of Lucero in the home half of the ninth, but Lucero was able to coax a pair of flyouts to end the game.
Grenn earned his first collegiate victory, going three-plus innings and allowing just two runs on two hits while striking out three in relief, while Lucero’s 1.1-inning, two-strikeout outing was just his second appearance of the season.
Navy Head Coach Paul Kostacopoulos was pleased with the team’s performance, saying, “When you go into the top of the seventh as the visiting team down, 7-1, and you find a way to get some rallies going and then come back and win the game, it shows a good collective offensive effort today. We hit with guys on base today. We had three players have four hits today in Burch, Rausch, and Keller, and seven of our nine starters had multiple hits, so we got it from everybody, which was good.”
The victory was a remarkable turnaround for Navy, who had lost their previous two games against Maryland earlier in the season. The Mids will now head to Easton, Pa., for a three-game Patriot League series against Lafayette.