Baseball Holds Off Bradley to Snap Skid in 5-4 Victory

Sunday, March 20

Auburndale, Fla. / Lake Myrtle Park

10:00 AM

Dartmouth College

4-8

Bradley

5-11

Bradley

Dartmouth

Jack Metzger baseball action at Louisville

Jack Metzger earned his first career save with three scoreless innings.

Photo by: Jermaine Bibb

Baseball Holds Off Bradley to Snap Skid in 5-4 Victory

3/20/2022 4:44:00 PM | Baseball

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Trystan Sarcone threw six solid innings and Jack Metzger shut the door

By: Rick Bender

AUBURNDALE, Fla. — Senior Trystan Sarcone threw six solid stanzas and junior Jack Metzger held Bradley scoreless for the final three innings to help Dartmouth defeat the Braves, 5-4, at Lake Myrtle Park on Sunday morning. The victory ended a five-game skid for the Big Green (4-8) and avenged the lopsided loss Bradley (5-11) handed them two days prior.

Sarcone (2-1) allowed the four runs on six hits and one walk while fanning four to pick up his second victory of the season. Metzger was dazzling on the mound as he picked up his first career save, facing the minimum over the final three frames and allowing just one hit — which was erased on a game-ending double play — to go with a pair of strikeouts.

Dartmouth got all of the offense it needed in the first two innings, answering Connor O'Brien's solo homer in the first with three runs in the bottom half. A single and a bunt that was throw away immediately put Big Green runners on second and third with nobody out, and both scored on junior Kolton Freeman's single. Freeman then took second on a single by senior Kade Kretzschmar, scampered to third on a pitch in the dirt and trotted home on senior Justin Murray's single for a 3-1 lead.

Wildness by Bradley starter Grant Jausel led to two more Dartmouth runs in the second. Sophomore Tyler Robinson was hit by a pitch and senior Bryce Daniel walked before a wild pitch allowed Robinson to take third with nobody out. After sophomore Tyler Cox lofted a sacrifice fly to score one run, Daniel stole second, moved to third on a ground ball to second and touched home when junior Connor Bertsch laced an RBI single for a 5-1 lead.

Sarcone, meanwhile, retired eight straight batters of surrendering the one-out homer in the first, and even when that string was broken by an error, he induced a double play to end the fourth with the score still 5-1 in favor of the Big Green.

Bradley had a great scoring opportunity in the fifth thanks to a double and single put runners on the corners with nobody out. Michael Mylott delivered a sacrifice fly to bring home a run, but that would be all as Sarcone stranded a pair by getting the final out on strikes with the count full.

In the sixth, Sarcone quickly retired the first two batters but had trouble getting the third out. A single and double put two runners in scoring position, and Jason Chatterton, who led the Braves with three hits on the day, produced a two-run single to close the gap to one at 5-4.

Metzger came on to start the seventh, and he retired the first six hitters he faced on just 16 pitches. He then got the first batter to start the ninth before Chatterton singled to bring the go-ahead run to the plate. But the right-hander got Mylott to hit a grounder to first, and Murray started a 3-6-3 double play to end the game.

Jausel (0-3) lasted just two innings in taking the loss, yielding all five runs, thre earned, on five hits and a walk. Nick King shut down the Dartmouth bats for six innings, giving up just three hits and a walk while punching out four.

The Big Green collected eight hits on the day with Murray the lone batter with two knocks, while Freeman delivered two RBIs.

Dartmouth will play at Lake Myrtle Park again tomorrow when it takes on Williams College at 1 p.m.

Notes: Bertsch's RBI single in the second extended his hitting streak to nine games, during which he is hitting .378 (14-for-37) … Dartmouth improved to 5-4 all-time against Bradley with all nine games played in Florida since the 2010 campaign.