South Carolina baseball pitching rocked by Xavier in midweek loss

Coming off getting swept against Clemson and with No. 1 Texas coming to town this weekend, the South Carolina Carolina baseball team couldn’t afford to drop a midweek game and any chance of a win.

But that’s what happened Tuesday night at Founders Park with the Gamecocks losing 15-7 to Xavier to push South Carolina’s losing streak to four games.

“Frustrating day for us,” South Carolina baseball coach Mark Kingston said. “But we gotta move on, gotta turn the page, get to work tomorrow. So, that will be our focus.”

After South Carolina (7-5) tied the game up at two with a Kevin Madden solo shot, Xavier raced out to a big lead thanks to a seven-run fourth inning to bury South Carolina. The Gamecocks were never able to recover. 

The Musketeers batted through the lineup, sending 10 to the dish, tagging Hunter for six runs.

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Xavier capitalized with runners on base and in scoring position. The Musketeers finished 12-for-28 with runners on and 10-for-23 with runners in scoring position. 

“That’s baseball. Sometimes baseball is cruel, and every ball that the opponent hits finds a hole and today was one of those days,” Kingston said. “Aidan [Hunter] has been pretty good for us most of the year and clearly today was not his day.”

While South Carolina’s pitching wasn’t able to produce, its offense couldn’t pick up the slack. 

The peak of the offensive production was in the bottom of a second when Kevin Madden launched his second home run of the year, a solo shot to right. 

Madden was a bright spot in the lineup offensively for the Gamecocks, he finished with two hits, a walk and two RBI.

After struggling offensively against Clemson, the Gamecocks were 8-for-31 with six different players—three of which were subs—unable to tally a hit at all. 

“Offensively, I thought we swung the bats well enough to win. Seven runs on eight hits, we walked eight times, Wimmer hit a couple balls –at least one– that would have been a homer on most days,” Kingston said. “So offensively and defensively we did, for the most part, enough to win. But again, as I told the team, if the other team scores more runs than you, then everybody could have done better.”

In comparison, all but one Xavier batter had a hit in the game. 

Scoring-wise, Xavier was able to add three more runs spread across the sixth and seventh innings thanks to three hits. 

South Carolina went scoreless from the fourth inning to the eighth with back-to-back RBI doubles from Talmadge LeCroy and Brandt Belk.

Xavier picked it back up in the top of the ninth with a two-run home run from its DH Tyler Demartino. 

Cam Tringali, at that point the eighth Gamecock pitcher to throw the ball, gave up the homer along with one more run before being taken out in the middle of his only inning of work.

South Carolina had to turn to a position player to get out of a bases-loaded jam that Tringali had created in the ninth. 

Jalen Vasquez took the mound and struck out the first batter he faced on three pitches, then had an unassisted double play to end the inning. 

“Getting towards the end there, we were running out of pitchers to pitch and obviously that’s why Jalen came in, ” Kingston said. “Jalen actually looked pretty good out there.”

Kingston said after the game that other position players have thrown bullpen for them but declined to share the “secret” of who those players were.

The Gamecocks now look to a weekend series with Texas, the No. 1 team in the country. 

“We’re not going to stop working, we’re not going to stop believing that we can win games,” Kingston said. “We’re going to go to work tomorrow and after we’re done working tomorrow we’ll do it again the next day. We just need to put one good day after another at this point and see where that takes us.”

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