Baseball Splits on Senior Day
LAMONI, IA - Yesterday afternoon, the Graceland University Baseball team hosted the Benedictine Ravens for their season finale and honored their 15 seniors at Chase Field in Lamoni, Iowa. Graceland is now 13-27 overall and 6-20 in conference play.
GAME 1 (W 6-0)
The Graceland University Yellowjackets started the first game of the series with their foot on the gas pedal, holding the Ravens to a 1-2-3 sequence in the top of the first inning and scoring 5 runs (3 earned, 2 unearned) in the bottom of the inning to take a commanding lead and to set the tone for senior day.
Defensively, Anthony Moore had started the game and completed the first Graceland baseball complete-game shutout since Aaron Miano in 2018. Moore had 2 strikeouts and 5 hits with 0 runs scored to earn the win. The play of the game was a diving over-the-shoulder catch by senior Tanner Maskey in shallow center field to keep the two base runners from scoring and keeping the shutout alive.
Offensively, Graceland had 5 different players earn themselves a run with Darwin Marquez leading the team with two runs, while pinch-running. Graceland would win game one and produce the first game of the season where Benedictine would lose and not score a single run.
GAME 2 (L 6-4)
The second game of the senior day series started in the opposite direction with Benedictine getting 4 hits and 4 runs in the first inning and shutting out Graceland in the bottom of the inning. Jared Soriano scores the first run of the game for the Yellowjackets off of a sacrifice fly to center field by Tanner Maskey in the bottom of the second inning.
Graceland then cut the lead from 6-1 to 6-4 in the bottom of the sixth inning with the help of 5 walks from the relief pitcher, 3 of those 5 walks were consecutive and scored two of the 3 runs in the inning.
Defensively, Chris Krystofiak entered the game to start the 7th inning and helped produce a 1-2-3 inning to keep the lead at 2 runs. Graceland would lose the second game of the senior day by a final score of 6-4.
Graceland honored their seniors in between the two games. Photos of all your favorite senior Graceland baseball athletes are available on Graceland University's Flickr account and video is available on Gujackets.com. Games 3 and 4 of the series are slated to take place April 25, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. at Chase Field and live video is available on GUJackets.com.
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