(Photo by John Kelley)
The sixth-ranked Vanderbilt Commodores hit four home runs to defeat the Georgia baseball team 10-3 on Sunday in front of a crowd of 3,608 at Hawkins Field, taking the weekend series from the Bulldogs.
The Commodores (34-10, 13-8 SEC) got home runs from freshman Julian Infante in the first, Jeren Kendall and Ethan Paul had two-run shots in the fifth and Karl Ellison led off the bottom of the eighth with a solo blast to highlight the scoring. Freshman right-hander Patrick Raby (6-0) went six innings for the win, allowing two runs with six strikeouts before giving way to John Kilichowski. He took care of the final three innings to pick up his second save.
Georgia’s first hit came from junior first baseman Trevor Kieboom (career-high 3-for-4) to start the fifth and then the Bulldogs got the first two men on in the seventh to force a pitching change. Junior Skyler Weber (2-4, RBI) led off with double and junior Stephen Wrenn smacked a single. Both would eventually score in the inning as Daniel Nichols and Keegan McGovern collected RBI to make it 8-2. Weber had his team-leading 18th multiple-hit performance when he added an RBI-double in the eighth to make it 9-3. Ellison’s blast provided the final margin.
Senior Heath Holder (2-3) provided 4.2 innings in the loss as he allowed six runs on five hits with five strikeouts. Junior Drew Moody and sophomores Bo Tucker and Blake Cairnes also saw action in the contest in relief of Holder.
“We got outplayed and outcoached in all phases of the game, and now we’ll be back home next week to get ready to face a very good Ole Miss team,” Ike Cousins Georgia baseball head coach Scott Stricklin said. “It’s a good matchup for us, and we definitely have to play better baseball. Vanderbilt’s a good team and you can’t give their pitchers a lead because they’re tough to beat once they get ahead and we fell behind early in every game of the series.”
Georgia (22-23, 7-14 SEC) will return to action Friday, May 6 to begin an SEC series with the ninth-ranked Rebels (33-12, 12-9 SEC) at 7 p.m. (SECN+). Ole Miss claimed a series over LSU this past weekend in Oxford.