Just as the rain fell during the game, so did the Quinnipiac baseball record, as Hartford handed it an 8-5 defeat, placing the Bobcats at 10-21 amidst a nine-game losing streak.
In the losing effort, Scott Donaghue had a day with two home runs and four RBIs. The mound was where Quinnipiac struggled as they cycled through four pitchers, none able to pitch more than four innings. Kevin Sustad, the starter for the game, had an especially difficult outing with five earned runs and only 1.1 innings pitched.
“He’s a young kid,” Quinnipiac head coach Dan Gooley said. “He’s had some trouble locating. This is his third time out. He hasn’t been able to get out of the second or third innings. Realistically this is his last start for this year.”
His immediate reliever, Ryan Walsh, carried most of the load pitching 3.2 innings with 13 at bats and four strikeouts.
“He threw strikes,” Gooley said on Walsh’s performance today. “He’s a really competitive kid who was off surgery in the offseason. He did exactly what he was supposed to do.”
The major damage came in the second inning where Sustad let up all five of his runs. Sustad had control issues early on. After a walk and wild pitch put Chris DelDebbio on second base, DelDebbio scored the first run with a single from Pat Knauth.
An Adam Touhey walk and another wild pitch advanced the runners to second and third. Three walks later, the score was 3-0 and a double from Brady Sheetz put the score to 5-0. Sustad was pulled after the fifth run scored.
Down 6-0, Quinnipiac put its first runs on the board as Donaghue hit his first home run after Vincent Guglietti and Chris Migani each singled.
The final runs for the Bobcats came in the eighth inning with back-to-back home runs from Migani and Donaghue.
“We were all jumping for joy and felt like we had a chance to get back into the game,” Guglietti said.
“Anytime you hit back-to-back home runs it gets you fired up,” Donaghue said. “We had a chance to come back and we fought hard. We didn’t get it, but we still fought hard.”
Heading into the second half of the season the team hopes to improve upon its pitching. Migani feels the record doesn’t show the true potential of the team.
“We gotta score runs,” Gooley said quite obviously. “That aluminum bat is supposed to help you a little bit.”
