Sophomore short stop Jonathan Roof is congratulated by his teammates after he scored in the bottom of the 6th inning against Western Michigan. The Spartans defeated the Broncos 6-0 Wednesday evening at McLane Baseball Stadium.
—A breakout three-run inning coupled with a masterful pitching performance from freshman Tony Bucciferro led the MSU baseball team to a 6-0 victory against Western Michigan on Wednesday at McLane Baseball Stadium.
The Spartans struggled to find a big hit to get over the scoring hump until the bottom of the sixth when they were finally able to move three runners across the plate.
Junior outfielder Bo Felt had one RBI and senior infielder A.J. Shindler had two in the inning, which gave Bucciferro all the cushion he needed to work the rest of the way.
“We played very well today,” MSU head coach Jake Boss Jr. said.
“I was proud of our guys from bouncing back from a weekend when we struggled a little bit. We got a great pitching effort out of our guys — Tony Bucciferro especially — and hopefully started to break out of a little funk later in the ball game. Hopefully we can carry that over into the next stretch of games.”
Once the Spartans managed to put a few runs across, the floodgates seemed to open. They tacked on three more runs the following inning.
“Enough was enough after five innings of not scoring any runs,” Felt said. “It was time to score some runs. We got it going and got the job done.”
Sophomore right-hander Kurt Wunderlich came in for the Spartans in the top of the eighth inning, relieving Bucciferro.
Wunderlich didn’t surrender a base runner in the eighth. Senior A.J. Dunn came in for the Spartans to pitch the top of the ninth inning. He surrendered one base hit, but the second batter grounded into a double play and Dunn got Western Michigan’s Chris Lewis to fly out to shortstop to end the game.
Bucciferro improved his record to 3-1 with a team-best 2.75 ERA in eight appearances. He’s struck out 32 batters in 39 and 1/3 innings of work.
On Wednesday, as the Spartans pitchers combined to allow just four hits, Bucciferro allowed three in seven innings of work and struck out nine.
“I was spotting my fastball a lot,” he said.
“My slider was pretty much my out pitch — they chased it a lot. Coach said before the game that I’ve been getting hit around a little bit and throwing a lot of strikes but when I miss I have to miss down and I did that a lot today.”
With the win, the Spartans improve their record to 12-21 and a perfect 9-0 in home games.
Next, they’ll have the third annual Crosstown Showdown against the Lansing Lugnuts at 7:05 p.m. today at Oldsmobile Park in Lansing.
The Spartans have never beaten the Lugnuts in two meetings, which have drawn more than 19,000 fans in two years — including a stadium record of 12,862 last season.
MSU’s busy week will conclude with a home-and-home series this weekend against Michigan, last season’s Big Ten champions.
“This is a good time to get hot right now,” Boss said. “Hopefully, today is the start of that.”
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