Baseball Walks Past Michigan 2-1 in Series Opener – Ohio State Buckeyes
5/2/2003 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
May 2, 2003
Box Score
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Paul Farinacci (So., Westlake Village, Calif./Agoura) drew a walk with the bases loaded to knock in the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning, giving Ohio State a 2-1 victory over Michigan in front of a season-best crowd of 2,833 in the opener of a four-game Big Ten series Friday night at Bill Davis Stadium. The win stretched the Buckeyes’ win streak to seven games in a row.
With the win, Ohio State has now won 16 of its last 18 games to improve to 29-12 on the year and 15-6 in conference play. Michigan fell to 22-19 overall and 9-10 in the Big Ten.
Farinacci’s bases-loaded walk scored Jedidiah Stephen (Fr., Caldwell, Ohio/Shenandoah), who, with one out, was hit by Michigan starter Michael Penn on his 100th pitch of the game. That prompted a pitching change as Tim Leveque came into the game for starter Michael Penn. Leveque struck out his first batter for the second out of the inning. Back-to-back hits by Mike Rabin (So., West Chester, Ohio/Lakota East) and Christian Snavely (Jr., Defiance, Ohio/Defiance) loaded the bases for Farinacci’s winning walk.
Scott Lewis (So., Washington Court House, Ohio/Washington) picked up the win, going 7 1/3 innings, to improve to 8-0 on the year. The victory over the Wolverines matched his win total from last season. Lewis left the game in the eighth with a runner at second and one out and gave way to Matt Davis (So., Mason, Ohio/William Mason), who got Brock Koman to pop out and Jake Fox looking at strike three to get out of the inning. Lewis gave up the one hit on five hits and finished the game with eight strike outs against one walk.
In the top of the ninth, after Ohio State went in order in the bottom of the eighth, Davis got Jordan Cantalamessa looking at strike three for the first out of the inning. Mike Sokol drew a walk to make it interesting, but Davis then got Chris Burhans to fly out and pinch hitter Brandon Roberts to ground out to the pitcher to end the game. Davis picked up his eighth save of the season, which tied him for the fourth best season in school history. He did not allow a hit in the final 1 2/3 and had two strikeouts and a walk.
Michigan jumped out to an early lead in the top of the first inning as Brock Koman singled up the middle to score Gino Lollio, who led off the inning with a base hit through the left side. He set up the score by stealing second base and moved to third on Lewis’ second wild pitch of the season.
Ohio State answered in the bottom of the inning, by scoring its lead-off man, Drew Anderson (So., Brownsburg, Ind./Brownsburg), who singled through the left side. He stole second and then moved to third on a ground out by Rabin. He scored on a sacrifice fly by Farinacci.
Each team had five hits in the game, but Ohio State had to overcome errors in the third and seventh innings. Farinacci finished 1-for-1 with the sacrifice in the first and the walk to knock in a pair of runs. He had a base hit in the third and walked again in the sixth. Lollio was 2-for-3 to pace the Wolverines.
Ohio State and Michigan will play a pair of games Saturday at 4:05 p.m. before concluding the series with a single game at 1:05 p.m. Saturday’s first game and Sunday’s finale will be broadcast by WOSU Radio (820 AM) while both games of Saturday’s doubleheader will be televised on ONN. Before Saturday’s game Ohio State will retire Fred Taylor’s No. 27 baseball jersey. Taylor was Ohio State’s first baseball All-American in 1950 as a first baseman.
