Box score
WEST LAWN, Pa. --- Elizabethtown College advanced to the championship round of the Commonwealth Conference baseball tournament for the sixth straight year with a 6-3 victory over Messiah College Friday afternoon at Owls Field.
The Blue Jays (24-14 overall) will seek their second straight title and fourth in the last five years Saturday at noon against Widener University, which defeated Messiah 5-4 in Friday's late game.
Matt Vinagro (5-4) pitched into the ninth inning to earn the win, while five different players drove in runs for the Blue Jays in the victory.
Ben Yeager and
Rodney Francis each had two hits and scored a run for Elizabethtown, which overcame an early 1-0 deficit with a run in the third, two in the fourth, one more in the fifth and two in the seventh.
Wes Hollenbach finished 3-for-5 with two runs scored for the Falcons (22-17 overall), but struck out with two on and two outs in the ninth against Blue Jay reliever
Ryan Barrett to end the game. Sam Tajiri went 4-for-5 with two steals and a run scored out of the leadoff spot for Messiah, which out-hit Elizabethtown 11-10.
Messiah took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first against Vinagro as Tajiri singled, stole second and scored on a single by Hollenbach. Elizabethtown tied the game in the third as Yeager led off with a single, moved to second on a passed ball and scored on a double by Vinagro.
The Blue Jays went ahead 3-1 in the fourth on a wild pitch by Falcon starter Eric Spring and an RBI double by
Anthony Heaps, and added a run in the fifth on an RBI single by
Dillon Tagle. Messiah got a run back in the sixth on an RBI double by Jordan Zimmerman, but Elizabethtown added two runs in the seventh on sacrifice flies by
Brian Kiernan and
Matt Reade to go ahead 6-2.
In the eighth, the Falcons cut the deficit to 6-3 on a sacrifice fly by Zimmerman, and a leadoff single in the ninth by Ryan Brown chased Vinagro after 132 pitches. Barrett, who saved Friday's 14-10 win over Alvernia University, induced a double-play grounder to clear the bases with two outs, but a single and a walk brought Hollenbach to the plate, and Barrett fanned him to end the game.
Spring (4-4), who threw a two-hit shutout against the Blue Jays in the regular season, yielded 10 hits and six earned runs in six-plus innings, with four strikeouts and two walks.