Maryland baseball fell flat in its series final against Rutgers on Sunday in a resounding 14-8 defeat. For the second week in a row, the Terps saved their opponent from the sweep by dropping their series finale.
Kyle McCoy, who started for Maryland, exited in the top of the fifth after taking a line drive to the face. He walked off the field on his own but forced Maryland coach Rob Vaughn to change his game plan on the fly. The relievers who followed let up eight of Rutgers’ 12 runs.
The Maryland offense managed to carve together rallies early through timely hits, but the scoring petered out right as the Golden Knights took off. Though the Terps fell short, Luke Shliger singled in two of the Terps’ runs, Zach Martin smacked three doubles and Luke Zeisloft drove in a three-run home run late to make the deficit look more respectable.
“This is what I really challenged [the team] on,” Vaughn said. “When you have an opportunity to sweep on a Sunday you’ve got to take advantage of it. And I didn’t think we played bad…but just not as clean as we needed to be.”
Despite the loss, this marked yet another successful weekend for the Terps. They move to 19-12 and 4-2 in Big Ten play, as well as 11-4 at home.
Both teams strung together hit rallies early on Sunday before Rutgers (16-15, 2-4 in Big Ten) ran away with it, creating what was initially the most back-and-forth matchup of the weekend series. Where the two prior games were defined by Rutgers building small leads before blowing them, the first four innings saw the Terps get on the board first with an Eddie Hacopian double bringing in Nick Lorusso.
Freshman McCoy dealt a quiet first inning, but the Scarlet Knights consistently knocked him around in the frames to follow. He let up at least one run in innings two through four, with a two-run Ryan Lasko double increasing the Rutgers score to four runs in the fourth.
The Terps contributed some small-ball of their own, as Shliger slapped two separate RBI singles to twice bring Martin home. Martin, this weekend’s designated hitter, has enjoyed near immediate success amidst his first three starts of the season, most memorably blasting a two-run homer in Saturday’s 4-3 victory.
The fifth inning kicked off with McCoy still on the mound, but he experienced a scare when Chris Brito lined one into the pitcher’s face. The crowd went quiet, and McCoy walked back to the dugout by his own power with his hat and glove covering his face. He finished with seven allowed hits through four innings and four earned runs.
Nigel Belgrave entered in relief, but he too struggled to keep the Scarlet Knights from reaching base. He loaded the bases before letting up a bloop single and a pop-out, which scored two more Rutgers runs to further improve the score to 6-3. He slipped even further in the sixth, relenting two home runs to Lasko and Jordan Sweeney. Andrew Johnson entered to stop the bleeding, but gave up yet another two-run tank to Josh Kuroda-Grauer. By the time the Terps forced their third out, Rutgers’ score had doubled from six to 12.
Matt Shaw singled up the middle to drive in (who else but) Martin in the bottom of the sixth, adding a fourth run for Maryland, but just about everything that followed was paperwork. Lorusso singled in the eighth to extend his hit streak to 30 games, but the Terps waited until their last out to make a dent in the score. Luke Zeisloft stepped up with a two-out three-run jack in the bottom of the ninth to cut the score to 14-7, and Lorusso singled in Shliger to add another. The brief bit of fun ended when Matt Shaw struck out after, finalizing the loss at 14-8.
“We’ve got to find a way to execute, minimize the middle and give us a chance late,” Vaughn said, lamenting a second straight week having botched a sweep opportunity.
The Terps will play the final game of their lengthy homestand on Tuesday in a rematch against Georgetown at 6 p.m.
