Baseball Suffers Its First Loss to Mars Hill, 11-3

The Belmont Abbey men’s baseball team fell for the first time this season 11-3 to Mars Hill in the second half of a doubleheader on Saturday evening. The Crusaders fell behind early and were unable to recover. The Abbey is now 3-1 on the season

Mars Hill jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second inning. Gabe Wallmeyer walked Jake Wooten to force in the first run.  A Shawn Weber single down the right field plated the second run. Tommy Scala was hit with a Wallmeyer pitch to force in the third Mars Hill run. Taylor West replaced Wallmeyer on the mound and walked Michael Bueker to force in the fourth run of the inning. After a scoreless third inning Joey Belviso hit a solo shot to left center to push the Mars Hill advantage to 5-0.

The Crusaders got on the board in the bottom of the fourth with back-to-back doubles by Stephen Mullis and Kyle Buchanan to cut the deficit to 5-1. After two scoreless frames in the fifth and sixth, Mars Hill pushed three more across in the top of the seventh. Belviso doubled to lead off the inning and scored on a double by Thomas Timmerman.  After a Coty Pate strikeout, Tyler Shuler doubled to score Timmerman. Wooten followed Matt Mayo’s ground out with a single to score Shuler and make the score 8-1. The Abbey added another run in the bottom of the seventh as Dan Brion followed Adam Venditti’s walk and Matt Mazzolla’s double with an RBI groundout to cut the deficit to 8-2. The bottom of the eighth saw the Crusaders score another run to make the score 8-3. Emilio Pagan singled to plate Blaine Hill.
Mars Hill pushed across the final three runs of the game in the top of the ninth. Wooten walked, and Shawn Weber was hit with a pitch to put runners on first and second. Scala singled and advanced to third as Wooten scored on a throwing error. Weber scored the second run as Bueker reached on a throwing error. Belviso grounded out to plate the third run as Scala scored from third to make the final score 11-3.

Vazquez went 2-2 including a double for the Abbey. Buchanan went 1-2 with an RBI. Pagan went 1-3 with an RBI. Wallmeyer suffered the loss giving up four runs in an inning of work.