The first eight innings of Missouri baseball’s doubleheader against Omaha were dreadful, until one of the most iconic “never give up” anthems, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,” turned the tide as the Tigers split the day’s games.
Before Missouri could skulk away to the locker room with a 17-5 loss, “Don’t Stop Believin’”, boomed through the Taylor Stadium speakers before the bottom of the ninth.
In the first leg of Saturday’s action, the Mavericks dominated Missouri. All nine Omaha position players recorded at least one hit and reached base multiple times as they bombarded every Tiger who stepped to the mound.
Junior southpaw Andrew Vail, graduate student righty Lukas Veinbergs, sophomore left-hander Brenner Maloney and junior right-hander Drew Garrett all allowed runs during their stints on the mound.
“We’re nowhere close to having it figured out on the pitching side,” Missouri coach Steve Bieser said. “I mean, we haven’t seen enough consistency out of some guys that we really were counting on early on in the season. There’s a lot of answers to be answered in that on the pitching staff right now.”
Vail’s start, which only lasted three-plus innings, could’ve lasted longer and looked better on the stat sheet if he could make it out of innings cleanly. All five runs credited to him came across with two outs, when he was a pitch or two away from avoiding damage.
Missouri received offensive production early with key at-bats from senior second baseman Mark Vierling with two RBI in the first two frames, but several key opportunities to regain momentum or add on more runs came and went.
Fifth-year right fielder Andrew Keefer went down swinging on a changeup to end the second with the bases loaded. Four innings later, senior left fielder Alex Peterson, who made a pair of ill-advised baserunning moves earlier in the game, grounded out to end the sixth when the Tigers were down two with two men on.
Without the extra runs, there was nothing Missouri could do to stop the middle-inning onslaught that put the game out of reach. After Omaha regained the lead in the fourth, a seven-run seventh inning that saw four men score before the first out sealed Missouri’s fate.
Omaha hit close to .400 over the course of the first game and received its biggest contribution from junior right fielder Chris Esposito, who knocked three hits, including two home runs, and finished with seven RBI.
Then, Journey’s biggest hit changed everything.
Missouri heeded the advice of the song’s chorus and put six runs on the board before Omaha could record an out. After Omaha’s junior right-hander Tanner Howe worked the bases loaded, senior designated hitter Chad McDaniel and freshman center fielder Ross Lovich hit back-to-back triples to score four runs.
Once Omaha pulled Howe, sophomore third baseman Torin Montgomery belted a home run into left field on freshman lefty Casey Young’s first pitch.a
“We had fight there,” Bieser said. “We just weren’t gonna turn over and try to move to the next game.”
While Missouri dropped the first game 17-11, the ninth inning sparked the bats and pitching heading into the second leg just 45 minutes later.
“It’s just a mentality,” Lovich said. “You have a short memory when you play baseball. You’re not going to be perfect all the time.”
Including the ninth inning of the first game, Missouri scored 16 unanswered runs with their third-consecutive double-digit scoring output to knock off Omaha 10-1 in the nightcap.
Keefer, junior shortstop Josh Day and junior catcher Mike Coletta each hit two-run homers before the end of the third inning, which provided more than enough run support for redshirt sophomore right-hander Seth Halvorsen and freshman southpaw Ian Lohse.
They put together Missouri’s cleanest pitching performance so far in the young season.
Halvorsen made it clear from the outset that he was in a groove. After surrendering a leadoff walk, he didn’t look back. The Plymouth, Minn. native collected the win with five scoreless frames in which he only allowed two hits and never dealt with much pressure as a result of the early lead.
Halvorsen baffled hitters through two trips in the order, setting down seven men with his changeup and slider. With his pitching, balls in play never left the infield, and he induced weak contact if the Mavericks could even hit the ball.
Bieser said that he allowed Coletta and Halvorsen to call the game themselves as opposed to coaches calling pitches from the dugout. Missouri’s skipper wanted Halvorsen to be confident in the pitches he was throwing and get into a flow.
“Mike and I just had a good rhythm from the start of the game in the bullpen, so we just got the green light right away,” Halvorsen said.
Once Halvorsen exited, Lohse brought more of the same to the mound with four innings pitched with two walks, six strikeouts and only one blemish on his line with an Esposito home run in the top of the ninth.
Between Missouri’s two pitchers in the second leg, the ball didn’t leave the infield until the eighth inning, when Missouri needed five outs to seal the victory.
“Both of those guys’ stuff plays really well, and when they throw it through the strike zone, it plays even better,” Bieser said. “Both guys feature plus velocity, so I like that combination of those two guys together. Hopefully we can continue to get that out of them every time they get that opportunity.”
Missouri has the chance to win its first home series of the season tomorrow afternoon at 1 p.m. at Taylor Stadium, where they might play Journey’s smash hit in the clubhouse to spark some inspiration to bring the record to .500.
_Edited by Jack Soble | jsoble@themaneater.com_
