BAYLOR BASEBALL: No. 25 Bears Drop Series Finale at Kansas

[Caton, Rachel]

BAYLOR ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS – March 31, 2019
No. 25 BEARS DROP SERIES FINALE AT KANSAS
The Bears rallied late, but fell 12-7 in game three of the series.
For more information contact: Rachel Caton, 254-652-2061, Rachel_Caton at baylor.edu<mailto:Rachel_Caton at baylor.edu>

THE RUNDOWN
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Despite collecting 12 hits, No. 25 Baylor dropped the series finale at Kansas on Sunday afternoon by a score of 12-7.

The Bears (20-7) put on a rally in the latter innings, scoring one in the sixth and three apiece in the seventh and eighth, but they were unable to overcome the Jayhawks’ lead as they added five in the sixth and three in the seventh to put the game out of reach.

The Bears did tally 12 hits on the day, but were hampered by an uncharacteristic three errors.

Shortstop Nick Loftin led the way at the plate, going 3-for-5 with 2 RBI, including his fifth home run of the day. Both Richard Cunningham and Andy Thomas had two hits apiece on the day, while Cunningham also added two RBI and Thomas one.

Pitcher Hayden Kettler earned the start in the ballgame, his first appearance since March 8 and he turned in two scoreless innings in a predetermined pitch count outing. He allowed two hits, struck out one and walked three as he worked out of jams in the early going.

The Jayhawks (15-12) added three in the third inning to take their first lead of the day off reliever Blake Helton as Jaxx Groshans connected on his Big-12 leading 10th home run of the year, a solo shot. The Jayhawks then took advantage of a Baylor fielding error to plate two more on two hits.

Kansas added one more in the fourth as the Bears trailed 4-0 before getting on the board in the sixth inning on an RBI single from Thomas.

However, the Jayhawks answered right as they plated five runs on four hits off Baylor reliever Tyler Thomas.

The Bears cut back into the lead in the seventh with three runs on four hits, including Loftin’s solo homer to make it a 9-4 ballgame.

Kansas put up three of their own in the bottom half of the seventh, aided by an error to push the game out of reach, despite Baylor’s fight in the top of the eighth to add three more runs to pull within five, 12-7

Reliever Helton took the loss for the Bears to fall to 1-1 on the day, while Jayhawk starter Eli Davis, who had the Bears off-balance through 6.1 innings of work earned the win to improve to 3-3.


NOTES

*The Bears saw their seven-win streak snapped with the loss. It’s the second-longest win streak of the season behind the season-opening eight straight.

*The Bears have won five-of-six weekend series, including two-straight conference series.

*Since inserting Nick Loftin in the leadoff spot on March 10, the Bears have scored 106 runs on 163 hits in their last 14 games. Loftin is 26-for-58 with 5 HR, 16 RBI and 18 runs scored during the stretch. The Bears are 11-3 in such games.
*106 of the Bears’ 205 runs scored on the year have come with two outs after four were scored with two outs today,

*Nick Loftin launched his fifth homer of the year and his second in as many games.

*Loftin has a team-leading 14-game on-base streak and 10-game hit streak. He picked up his team-leading 19th multi-hit games of the year.

*Loftin has tallied eight straight multi-hit performances. He is 19-for-33 over those contests.

*Andy Thomas extended his on-base streak to 14 games.

*Davis Wendzel extended his on-base streak to eight games.

*Kettler made his first start since March 28.

*Kyle Hill made his 13th appearance of the year and recorded his 118th career strikeout in relief, tying him for sixth on the Baylor all-time career relief strikeouts list.

*Luke Boyd made his 12th appearance of the season.

*Ryan Leckich made his team-leading 14th appearance of the year.

*T. Thomas made his sixth appearance of the year, while Helton made his seventh.

STAT OF THE DAY
8  – Nick Loftin collected his eighth-straight multi-hit performance.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
On today’s contest…
“I think we just made too many mistakes early. We weren’t getting ahead of hitters early on the mound and we couldn’t get anything going offensively until later in the game. I thought our guys showed a lot of heart continuing to come back, put good swings on balls and put guys in scoring position, we were just waiting for one more big hit and we just couldn’t get it.
            - Baylor head coach Steve Rodriguez


WHAT'S NEXT
The Bears will head back to Texas, but remain on the road as they visit Dallas Baptist at 6 p.m. CT on Tuesday, April 2.

For tickets to home games, visit: https://baylorbears.com/sports/2018/9/11/tickets.aspx. For updates on the program follow @baylorbaseball on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

-baylorbears.com-


___________________________________
Rachel Caton | Associate Sports Information Director
Department of Athletics | Baylor University
O: 254-710-3784
C: 254-652-2061

[cid:image001.png at 01D3533B.25DEF160]<http://www.baylorbears.com/>


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