-Bryce Hayes, TLU Sports Information
(Seguin) – Texas Lutheran baseball won its 19th straight Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference series and extended its current winning streak to seven games with a three-game sweep of St. Thomas at Katt-Isbel Field over the weekend, defeating the Celts 1-0 on Friday, then 7-2 and 11-9 on Saturday.
The duo of Joe Burch and Blade Strzelczyk pitched the Bulldogs’ first shutout of the season in Friday’s series opener.
Burch made his eighth start of the season, pitching seven scoreless innings with five strikeouts to pick up his fourth win of the season. He allowed five hits and gave up one walk. Strzelczyk relieved Burch in the eighth and pitched two scoreless innings to pick up his fourth save of the season – finishing with three strikeouts, only allowing one hit and one walk.
Texas Lutheran scored the only run of the game in the bottom of the sixth. Blade Strzelczyk would reach first on a throwing error from the St. Thomas shortstop bringing home Joe Jimenez to get Texas Lutheran on the board.
St. Thomas would leave eight men on base including leaving the bases loaded in the top of the second inning.
Prior to Saturday’s doubleheader, Texas Lutheran honored baseball alum Mark Love and announced the first annual “Mark Love Award” winner – awarded to the player who demonstrates team leadership, charm, resilience and dependability – with the honors going to senior Hayden Mundy.
Zach Longshore pitched four innings and allowed two runs on four hits and picked up his third win of the season in Saturday’s early game. He struck out four batters in the process. Brendan Beard tossed five shutout innings in relief – striking out four and only allowing one walk.
Joe Jimenez went 2-for-4 with a home run and two RBI, while Alec Sanchez finished 2-for-4 with a double and 2 RBI.
St. Thomas took an early 2-0 lead – scoring a run in each of the first two innings – before Texas Lutheran would respond in the bottom of the second with Jimenez launching a solo homer and Alec Sanchez scoring Tyler Post to tie the game 2-2.
Texas Lutheran would score seven unanswered runs – scoring in four consecutive frames. Jimenez would strike again in the third inning with an RBI single to give TLU a 3-2 lead. A sacrifice bunt from Blade Strzelczyk would score Randy Huerta to bring the score to 4-2.
Texas Lutheran would score two more runs in the fourth courtesy of an RBI double from Holden Philippus and Alec Sanchez would add another in the fifth with an RBI double to bring the game to its final score of 7-2.
In what made for a back-and-forth game two, Texas Lutheran rallied to score three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to complete the sweep of the Celts.
Prior to the eighth inning, Saturday’s finale was a whirlwind. Texas Lutheran would score in the first three innings to take an early 6-1 edge with starter JT Taylor only allowing one run in his first three innings of work.
St. Thomas came alive in the fourth inning scoring six runs on six hits to take a 7-6 lead.
Fortunately, Texas Lutheran would not go quietly as Holden Philippus would hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the fifth as Texas Lutheran reclaimed the lead, 8-7.
St. Thomas would go ahead of the Bulldogs in the top of the eighth following a two-run top of the frame.
Texas Lutheran would respond with three runs of their own with Aric Vasquez giving the Bulldogs a 10-9 lead following a two-RBI double. A sacrifice-fly from Carson Draehn would give the Bulldogs pitching staff extra run support heading into the top of the ninth inning,
Blake Cappadona, who started the game in right field, would take the mound in the ninth inning shutting the door on any potential St. Thomas comeback for his second save of the season.
With the sweep, the Bulldogs streak of conference series wins moves to 19 dating back to 2018. The Bulldogs also extended their win streak to seven games.
The Bulldogs begin a four-game road trip with a mid-week non-conference matchup with the Concordia University Tornados at Tornado Field on Tuesday, April 5. First pitch is scheduled for 6:30 PM. All streaming and live stats links can be found on tlubulldogs.com.