WACO – The Sam Houston Bearkats could not hold onto a 3-run lead on Tuesday night, falling 9-5 to Baylor at Baylor Ballpark.
The Kats (19-17) out-hit the Bears (20-17) by a 16-11 margin and led 4-1 after a 3-run fourth inning, but then surrendered seven unanswered runs to Baylor over the next four frames, pushing Baylor to its fourth consecutive victory.
Matt Rudis gave the Kats a strong 4.0 innings in a start, but it was
Gavi Coldiron who was saddled with the loss after allowing a pair of runs in 1.1 innings of relief.
Justin Wishkoski turned in a big game offensively with four hits and an RBI, while
Easton Loyd delivered three hits and his second home run of the season.
A grounder by
Carlos Contreras in the third gave the Kats an early 1-0 lead, but the Bears answered back immediately with an RBI single from Tre Richardson.
One inning later the Kats' bats got hot, starting with Loyd's leadoff homer to retake the lead and continuing two batters later when
Anthony MacKenzie blasted his first homer of the year out to right field to push the lead to 3-1.
Wishkoski's big night continued with an RBI single to make it a 4-1 game and have the Kats poised for a big inning before the Bears were able to get a key double-play grounder that prevented any further damage.
That proved key when Baylor got two of those runs back on a 2-run double by Cam Caley in the bottom half of the inning, setting things up for a tide-turning sixth frame. A leadoff bloop triple by Casen Neumann got the whole thing started and he scored the tying run on a single one batter later by Chase Wehsener.
The Kats were in line to get out of the inning without any further damage, but another bloop did them in, this time off the bat of Esteban Cardoza-Oquendo that scored Wehsener to put the Bears in front for the first time. Two batters later Jack Pineda opened it up with a 2-run double into the left-center field gap to give the Bears a 7-4 lead.
Ian Groves made it an 8-4 game with a solo homer in the seventh, but
Jacob Guerrero got that run back with a pinch-hit RBI double in the eighth before Baylor answered once again with a score in the bottom half.
Sam Houston will now look to hit the reset button when it returns to WAC play, beginning Friday with the opener of a 3-game series at Tarleton.
