Ohio State baseball pitches its way to 1-0 victory over Morehead State

Giustino Bovenzi
Wed, 13 Apr 2016 13:29:10 +0000
Baseball, Sports, Austin Woodby, Buckeyes, Greg Beals, Morehead State, ohio state, osu, Yianni Pavlopoulos

OSU sophomore Seth Kinker (37) fires a pitch during a game against Morehead State at Bill Davis Stadium on April 12. OSU won 1-0.
Credit: Giustino Bovenzi | Lantern reporter

The Ohio State baseball team snapped its four-game losing streak Tuesday with a 1-0 win over the Morehead State Eagles. The victory improved OSU’s record to 20-11-1 and dropped Morehead State’s to 19-14.

The Buckeyes were led by the complete performance of their pitching staff, which kept the Eagles off the scoreboard despite allowing six hits over the course of the game.

OSU’s only run came in the second inning on a double off the bat of senior designated hitter Ryan Leffel, scoring senior first baseman Troy Kuhn.

OSU coach Greg Beals said he was pleased with his pitching staff’s ability to grind it out and bounce back with a solid performance over the Eagles after the worst week of the Buckeyes’ season.

“We got a great start from (redshirt sophomore Austin Woodby), to get five innings from him was great,” Beals said.

Woodby (4-1), who was making just his second start of the season, threw a career-high 5.0 innings, allowing just four hits and one walk. Woodby said it was nice to see the entire pitching staff combine for the Buckeyes’ first shutout of the season after three tough losses against Maryland.

“It’s huge,” Woodby said. “It kind of just gets the confidence back. Back in the feeling of winning a baseball game. It was a tough weekend, but the win at home was definitely good to get under our belt.”

Beals said he was also proud of the way his closer, redshirt sophomore Yianni Pavlopoulos, shook off two blown saves to pull off a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

“To get Pavlopoulos back out there, I thought, was really important,” Beals said. “To get him back out there after the weekend and show the confidence and give him another shot to get another save and rebuild his confidence back up a little bit and let him know there’s no residue from the weekend. We’re getting right back at it.”

Redshirt junior right fielder Jacob Bosiokovic, who went 2-for-4 at the plate against the Eagles, said the win helps the team’s confidence, and he expects the Scarlet and Gray bats to come alive against the Eagles on Wednesday.

“We just have to go at the game at 100 percent,” Bosiokovic said. “You’d think we’re not hitting that well, but really we’re having a lot of good at-bats and a lot of quality at-bats and hitting the ball hard. So we just have to stay with our process and stay with our approach of putting the barrel on the ball, and eventually the game will play out and we’ll get back to how we we were at the beginning of the year.”

The second game against the Eagles is set to get underway at 6:35 p.m. OSU is expected to send senior righty Daulton Mosbarger (1-0, 0.84 ERA) to the mound for his first start of the season against Eagles junior righty Luke Humphries (4-2, 4.78 ERA) to close out the midweek set.