With a little help from the Wolverines, the MSU baseball team staged a ninth-inning rally Sunday and won 5-3 at Ray Fisher Stadium.
The Spartans (26-9 overall, 9-6 Big Ten) entered the final inning down 3-0. But after loading the bases with one out, Michigan (12-22, 7-9) threw seven wild pitches to give MSU the lead for good.
After collecting the four unearned runs, junior right fielder Bob Malek singled in the Spartans only earned run of the game for the 5-3 win. Malek finished the game 2-for-5 with one RBI.
“It’s funny how things turned out, but we battled the whole way and we never quit,” Spartan manager Ted Mahan said. “We got some big hits in the last inning and we battled and battled the whole game and there was no quit in us. We just got up late in the game, but that’s why baseball is a nine-inning game.
“We hit a lot of line drives and we hit a lot of balls hard early and often, and we didn’t get any breaks, and in the end we finally got some breaks and it’s a huge win for Michigan State, there’s no question about that.”
Keeping the Spartans quiet early was the responsibility of U-M starting pitcher Jeff Trzos. The left-hander went eight and one-third innings before coming out after loading the bases in the top of the ninth. He struck out seven and scattered nine hits.
But Trzos was credited with three earned runs, after the first three wild pitches. His relief in the ninth, right-hander Matt Collins (3-1), was responsible for five wild pitches.
The ninth inning started with a single from sophomore third baseman James Moreno, who finished 2-for-4.
“Going in there, I knew we needed a base runner,” Moreno said. “I think we worked so hard that whole game and we had nothing to show on the board, and I went up in that last inning and was like, ‘It’s now or never.’”
Malek said Moreno’s base knock gave the Spartans new life and started the rally.
“Once we got that first runner on, we were like, ‘All right, here we go,’” Malek said. “That gave us a little confidence and we just rolled with that.”
Freshman right-hander Tim Day pitched the first six and one-third innings for MSU. Day finished with just one earned run, but the Wolverines tallied three in the bottom of the second, when a Spartan error prolonged the inning, allowing U-M to tally two more runs.
Senior left-hander Kyle Geswein (2-1) picked up the win after pitching the final two and two-thirds without giving up a hit.
The win gave MSU a 3-1 series win. The Spartans won Friday’s series opener 11-0, behind a complete game shutout from sophomore right-hander Bryan Gale. Senior right-hander Nick Bates struck out a career-high 11 batters in Saturday’s first game of a doubleheader, which the team won 4-3. The Spartans failed to get the series sweep because of a 19-4 loss in Saturday’s nightcap.
“We win today and we’re 3-1 on the weekend - it’s a great weekend,” Mahan said. “It’s the first time winning three and we did it against Michigan, which is a little bit more special.
“But we have a doggone good baseball team, and that’s why we’re 26-9. We’re good and we deserved to win today.”
The U-M series catapulted the Spartans into a second-place tie with Indiana. The Hoosier also stand at 9-6 in the conference, but their Sunday game was canceled because of poor weather conditions.
MSU started the weekend in fourth place, but skipped past Purdue when the Boilermakers lost at home to Iowa on Sunday.
“I told the guys before the game that if we won, we could be in second place depending on what the other teams do,” Mahan said. “So I think if we keep plugging away, we can still win a championship.”
