Sophomore
Isaac Spiegel took a shutout into the ninth inning as the Muhlenberg baseball team tuned up for Centennial Conference play with a 7-1 home win against Elizabethtown.
The Mules (10-7) won for the second straight day and will take a double-digit win total into their CC schedule, which begins Saturday at Johns Hopkins, for the first time since 2013.Â
Spiegel, making his third career start, worked a career-high 8 1/3 innings, allowing six hits and striking out two. He allowed only four hits through the first eight innings and came out after giving up a walk and two singles in the ninth. Freshman
Will Nomura retired both hitters he faced to nail down the win.
Spiegel
(pictured above) got some big outs himself and from his fielders. Nursing a 1-0 lead in the sixth, he got the Blue Jays' top hitter, a preseason All-American, on a soft pop fly to second base to end the inning with the tying run on third base.
The next inning, junior second baseman
John Serruto made a diving stop on a ground ball to get the third out with two runners on base.
The corner infielders, junior
Jack Avallone at first and senior
Jon Capra at third, started double plays by snagging line drives.
Avallone and Capra also supported Spiegel at the plate. Avallone hit RBI singles in the fourth (breaking a scoreless tie) and the eighth, and Capra had a two-run single in the eighth.
Sophomore
Cameron Miller went 3-for-4 and scored two runs, and junior
Michael Martinez had a pair of hits, including an RBI double.
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