DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - The Embry-Riddle baseball team earned its 48th all-time victory against Edward Waters on Tuesday evening at Sliwa Stadium, taking a 4-0 lead before scoring four late, and important, insurance runs to down the Tigers 8-4. The Eagles improved to 7-4 overall with the win, while the Tigers drop to 7-3.
Both starters were solid for their respective teams, and neither factored into the decision.
Tyler Donay matched zeroes with Sebastian Velez through three innings, with Donay escaping out of two precarious situations in the first and the third. With runners on the corners and one out in the first, Donay got exactly what he needed in a ground ball that his infield turned into two outs, and then with the bases loaded and two outs in the third, Donay escaped by inducing a sky high pop up in the infield.
Velez, meanwhile, kept ERAU at bay without much traffic, but when he was finally relieved to start the fourth inning the Eagles reached the scoreboard.
Jeremy Kennedy-Davis collected a one-out double before scoring on a two-out single to center from
Josh Reynolds for a 1-0 ERAU lead.
Keagan Perez, who threw a scoreless top of the fourth, did the same in the fifth. and the Eagle offense rewarded him with three runs in the home-half of the frame. The Eagles had a runner at third in the form of
Zach Coldsnow, but with two outs the Eagles again needed some two-out hitting. They got it when
Camden Traficante singled through the right side, scoring Coldsnow and doubling the Eagle lead.
Timo Aracena then doubled the advantage again, hitting his first career home run, a deep blast to right that made it 4-0 in favor of the hosts.
The Tigers answered quickly, scoring twice in the sixth off of Perez, chasing him from the game with two outs in the frame for
Knute Rockey. Rockey needed just one pitch to get out of the inning, keeping the Eagle lead at two.
Embry-Riddle couldn't do much against Luis Martinez Delgado in the bottom of the sixth, but neither could the visitors do much off Rockey in the seventh.
Gunnar Harrison came in for Rockey in the eighth after the first two batters reached base, and thanks to a baserunning blunder that accounted for the first out, Harrison got the last two outs via a strikeout and groundout, eliminating the threat and sending the game to the bottom of the eighth.
The Blue and Gold put a crooked number on the board in its last at-bat, scoring four times, three of the runs coming across as unearned thanks to three Tiger errors in the frame. Reynolds collected his second RBI of the day with a single that scored
Tyler Castelli, Kenendy-Davis' pinch runner, and
Garrett Bogart, who was on first at the time, came all the way around to score after a miscue in right.
Kevin Vittoria brought Reynolds in with a double, and he later scored when
Noah Clymer singled through the left side, pushing the Eagle lead to 8-2.
Those runs would prove to be important as the Tigers were able to touch up Harrison for two runs in the ninth, but the righthander was able to close the game, earning his third save of the season, by getting a weak ground ball in front of the plate that Bogart pounced on and fired to first for the final out of the contest.
Bogart finished 3-for-4 at the dish, while Reynolds and Aracena each had two RBIs for the Eagles. Perez (1-0) earned the win in 2.2 innings of work and Harrison grabbed his third save.
The Eagles head to Aiken, South Carolina to take on USC Aiken Feb. 24-26 at Roberto Hernandez Stadium.
