Winona, Minn. - The Bethel University baseball team captured two wins (11-2, 11-2) against St. Mary's in a doubleheader on Wednesday afternoon. The Royals improve to 12-4 (4-0) on the year.
Justin Winterfeldt and
Tommy Friesen led the Bethel offense on the day, each with five hits in the doubleheader. On the mound,
Marcus Krupke and
Max Sutter each picked up a win. Sutter earned his third win on the season with an impressive shutdown performance in the second game, throwing eight innings of one-run baseball and throwing seven strikeouts.
Game 1 | Bethel 11, Saint Mary's 2
Bethel ambushed Saint Mary's pitching early in the first inning, scoring three runs when Keenan Hodgkin drove in two runs with a double and Nick Kulseth drove Hodgkin in with an RBI single to put the Royals up 3-0.
Saint Mary's answered back in the second inning with two runs of their own to cut the deficit to 3-2 but the Royals responded with four more runs of their own in the top of the third inning when a Keenan Hodgkin sacrifice fly drove in two runs, Ty Koehn scored on a throwing error by the Saint Mary's third baseman and Nolan Jurgenson drove in another run with an RBI single to center field to put the Royals up 7-2.
The offense continued to pour on for the Royals as they would go on to add three more runs in the fourth thanks to a Nick Kulseth two-RBI single to left and a Jordan Krupke sacrifice fly. One more run for the Royals scored in the fifth inning when Matthew Carlsen scored on a fielding error by the right fielder during a Tommy Friesen single.
Marcus Krupke picked up the win on the mound for the Royals, pitching six innings with two earned runs and one strikeout.
Game 2 | Bethel 11, Saint Mary's 2
Saint Mary's struck first in the second game in the second inning with a run to go up 1-0 but it wasn't long before Bethel answered and exploded for six runs of their own in the third highlighted by a
Tommy Friesen two-RBI single to center, a
Justin Winterfeldt three-run homerun and a
Keenan Hodgkin RBI double to right center field to put the Royals up 6-1
Bethel continued to ambush Cardinal pitching, scoring three runs in the fourth inning after
Noah Wenberg scored on a wild pitch and
Ty Koehn drove in two more with a double to right-center field to put the Royals up 9-1.
The Royals scored two more times in this game, once in the sixth inning when
Justin Winterfeldt scored on a wild pitch and once in the ninth when Winterfeldt hit a sacrifice fly to put the Royals up 11-1
Saint Mary's scored a run in the bottom of the ninth, but it was too little too late, as the Royals secured the 11-2 victory and saw an identical score from earlier in the day.
Max Sutter earned his third win of the season with eight innings pitched and one earned run, highlighted by seven strikeouts.
Up Next:
The Royals will return home for a doubleheader against Hamline on April 15th with start times scheduled for 1 P.M. and 3:30 P.M. at Hargis Park.
