Lansing — Kids were invited to run the bases Sunday afternoon at Oldsmobile Park, but they were not the only ones rounding the bases. The Fort Wayne Wizards put together a five-run, eighth inning against the Lansing Lugnuts.
Sophomore catcher Kyle Day and junior left-hander Jon Kibler were selected in the 2007 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, which concluded Friday.
While scouts rave over Lugnuts outfielder Travis Snider's potential stardom in the big leagues, Snider is content to write his own blossoming story in baseball archives using a bat, glove and the confines of Oldsmobile Park. Snider, a 19-year-old from Mill Creek, Wash., was the Toronto Blue Jays' 2006 first-round draft pick and 14th overall selection.
MSU baseball head coach David Grewe met with his team last week and commended the players for battling back toward the end of the season.
Several MSU baseball players earned All-Big Ten honors Tuesday afternoon. The announcements came after MSU narrowly missed the Big Ten Tournament with a 8-7 loss to Illinois on Sunday.
The Lansing Lugnuts took three of four games against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers this past weekend.
Despite jumping out to a 7-0 lead, the MSU baseball team fell to Illinois 8-7, Sunday afternoon at Illinois Field, putting an end to the Spartans' hopes of playing in the postseason Big Ten Tournament.
The Lansing Lugnuts placed second baseman Chris Gutierrez on the 7-day disabled list after the infielder suffered a hamstring injury.
The MSU baseball team hopes to ride a hot streak all the way to the Big Ten Tournament as they head to Champaign, Ill.
Lansing — The Lansing Lugnuts' lineup was no match for a strong pitching staff Tuesday. South Bend Silverhawks starter Brett Anderson kept the Lansing offense quiet, leading his team to a 5-3 victory. Anderson did not allow a base runner through three innings but was the first to allow a run.
Lansing — Chants of "Let's get some hits" filled the air at Oldsmobile Park on Sunday as MSU battled Northwestern in the final game of a weekend series. Going into the ninth inning with the game tied at three, freshman outfielder Chris Roberts stepped up to the plate and did just that.
Lansing — The Lansing Lugnuts ended a four-game series against The Swing of the Quad Cities on a down note Friday night, falling 11-5.
It's not time to hit the panic button yet, but the MSU baseball team has drastically shrunk its margin for error the last two weeks. Since a heartbreaking final-inning defeat to Penn State on April 15, the Spartans (15-18 overall, 6-9 Big Ten) have lost seven straight games, including a four-game sweep at the hands of Minnesota last weekend.
The MSU baseball team will look to end a six-game losing streak when it hosts Central Michigan at 5:05 p.m.
This was going to be the turning point, the rally that made all the pain from Sunday's heart-wrenching, final-inning loss disappear.
David Grewe sat at the end of the MSU bench, alone. The dugout was empty, except for a few pieces of equipment and some discarded sunflower seeds on the ground.
Dennis Jones is fast. You can tell that much just by watching him patrol center field for the MSU baseball team. But it's hard to gauge just how fast he is unless you look at some of his cheetah-like statistics. Jones runs the 60-yard dash in 6.3 seconds — about the same pace as the MSU track team's all-time record holder in the 60-meter dash. He's stolen a team-high 10 bases in 11 attempts this season — only three players in the conference have stolen that many bases with better efficiency. Baseball scouts rate foot speed on a scale of 20 to 80.
Because of inclement weather, the baseball series against Penn State has been postponed. Originally scheduled to begin at 3:05 p.m.
Lansing — Some people have to wait years to get redemption for their mistakes. Brandon Doherty only needed a few pitches. Moments after making a throwing error in the ninth inning that brought the go-ahead run to the plate, Doherty made a lunging grab on a line drive to preserve the MSU baseball team's 6-5 win against Western Michigan on Tuesday at Oldsmobile Park. "If that error cost us the game," a smiling Doherty said afterward, "I'm not going to be happy the rest of the night, that's for sure." The Broncos (8-16), who entered their final at-bat down two, had a runner on second with two outs when Chris Lewis grounded weakly to Doherty, a junior shortstop. "I kind of looked away right there because I thought it was an automatic," MSU head coach David Grewe said. But Doherty's throw was wild, allowing the runner from second to score and Lewis, the tying run, to move into scoring position. The next hitter roped one to Doherty's right, and for a moment, it appeared his error on the previous play would prove extremely costly.
Two runs. That's all that separates the MSU baseball team from a perfect start to conference play. The Spartans dropped the opener of Monday's doubleheader against Purdue, 1-0 — their second one-run loss in the conference — then blanked the Boilermakers, 3-0, in the back end to take the series at Kobs Field and improve to 13-10 overall, 5-2 in the Big Ten. Only once in the last decade have the Spartans gotten off to a better conference start — 2004, when they won their first six games. "The crazy thing is we're that close to being undefeated in the Big Ten," head coach David Grewe said, holding his fingers an inch apart.