Box Scores

Southeast Missouri batters thrived in two-out situations in Sunday’s game and Eastern’s pitching staff did not.

All 10 runs the Redhawks scored in their 10-4 victory were with two outs.

“That is a sign that the pitching staff isn’t closing it out at critical times,” Eastern head coach Jim Schmitz said.

The win gave the Redhawks a 2-1 series win. On Saturday, the teams split a doubleheader with SEM winning the first game and Eastern winning the second.

In Sunday’s game starting pitcher Tyler Brandon pitched 3 2/3 innings and allowed six runs. Brandon struggled with his control, walking four batters.

Freshman Richie Derbak, who came on in the sixth inning to relieve senior Mike Budde, gave up a grand slam by SEMO’s second baseman Omar Padilla with two outs in the seventh. Padilla’s grand slam to left field increased SEMO’s lead to 10-3.

“It’s tough because we think we can hold them and we got the first two outs with only one away,” Derbak said. “It is really demoralizing for the team as a whole to see it slip away.”

Eastern scored first in the top of the second, after back-to-back walks from first baseman Erik Huber and third baseman Ryan Campbell.

Jason Cobb hit a sacrifice bunt to the pitcher to advance the runners and an RBI single from Derbak brought in Huber.

SEMO answered back with two runs in the bottom of the second and one in the third inning.

The Panthers scored two runs in the top of the fourth but the Redhawks put up three runs in the bottom of the inning.

The Panthers lost the first game of the series 10-5 but won the second in big fashion, 14-4, with 28 hits on the day.

“Coming off the second game on Saturday we were excited going into the game and thinking we were in battling with the top teams and now we are worried about making the tournament,” Schmitz said.

With the two losses, Eastern (18-21, 8-9 Ohio Valley Conference) moved from fifth place to seventh place. The Panthers have lost six of their last seven games and their last three weekend OVC series’.

The Panthers have nine conference games left, and are just a half-game behind sixth-place Eastern Kentucky.

Schmitz said it seems like when the pitching staff does well, the Panthers don’t hit as well and when they are hitting the ball, they aren’t pitching well.

“We need to put them both together,” he said. “You’d think they would feed off each other, but that is not the case.”

Huber, who played a full game this weekend for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury the last weekend in March, said that they should be able to work it out in practice this week.

“There is definitely something we need to figure out and having only one game this week and a full week of practice will allow us to get everyone on the same page,” Huber said.