Kentucky Wildcats Baseball: Bat Cats Take 2 Out of 3 against Illinois-Chicago

It has been a good weekend for the Bat Cats that has shown some areas they may want to improve at. Kentucky took on Illinois-Chicago for a three game weekend series at Cliff Hagan Stadium and came out of the weekend 2-1. The only loss of the weekend came in the Friday night game.

The Friday’s game put Taylor Rogers up against Joey Begel on the mound. Rogers pitched 6.2 innings before the wheels began to fall off the bus. The Bat Cats held a strong lead throughout the game to lose in a come from behind 10-8 win for UIC. The Cats was holding a six run lead going into the top of the seventh inning all things was running smooth until UIC put eight unanswered points on the board. The Cats had a chance to win this game in the ninth inning as they held a small lead of 8-6 but this would not last long as UIC put four runners across the plate for the loss. But the Cats was not out of it just yet as the Cats brought the tying run up to the plate after Braden Kapetyn was hit by pitch with one out in the bottom of the ninth. Luke Maile comes up to the plate hitting a deep ball that was caught just shy of the warning track, which brought up Mike Kaczmarek to plate and a wild pitch was thrown Kapetyn attempted to take second on the wild pitch but was unsuccessful being gunned down by the catcher.

There was several positives that came out of this game including the offense the team did score eight runs and 10 hits. The biggest performance came from catcher Michael Williams who had an amazing day going 3-for-4 with three runs, three RBI and two home runs. This was amazing as these were his first homers since his freshman season and he is now a junior. Taylor Black as usual had a great day at the plate going 2-for-3 with two walks and a RBI. Rogers pitched a good game besides this seventh inning troubles seeing this is his seventh start of his career at Kentucky.

Game two of the weekend brought Alex Meyer who led the Wildcats to a 13-3 victory. The Wildcats came out hitting early and often as they had 19 hits in the game. The Bat Cats received a hit from every member of the starting lineup but the star players included Black, Maile and Brian Adams. Each of these guys recorded three hits apiece.

While at the mound Meyer tossed a seven strikeout game in five innings of work before handing the ball over to Walter Wijas. Wijas pitched in his second start game and is becoming an important member of the bullpen this season during Saturday’s game the tossed two innings of shutout baseball. Then Alex Phillips came into the game making his second appearance ever in a Kentucky uniform adding two more innings of shutout ball.

The final game of the series was a low scoring pitcher duel that put Jordan Cooper up against Matt Salemi as Kentucky pulled a 3-1 win in late innings. Cooper went 5.1 innings allowing UIC to score in the top of the third. He gave up eight hits, one walk and a strike out. Before giving the ball over to Trevor Gott who received his first career win tossing 2.1 innings of shutout baseball and giving the ball to Kaczmarek for the save.

Kentucky had five hits in this game coming from five different guys giving three different guys RBI to score the three runs.

The Wildcats have shown this weekend that they can put up runs but the one area I worry about is the bullpen. You have had great starting pitching up to this point in the season but the bullpen has not allowed them in some cases to get the win. The season is still young and it takes bullpens some time to develop to see who the standouts are. Hopefully this will come sooner than later while the Bat Cats are seating at 4-4 on the season.

The Bat Cats are off this week as they prepare for the Houston College Classic at Minute Maid Park this weekend.

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