Baseball sweeps Northwestern, win streak at 15!

Submitted by Wolverine Devotee on

That embarrassing 8-3 loss to an NAIA school did wonders for this team.

ICYMI, Michigan lost to Lawrence Tech back on March 14 to drop to 5-11 on the season. Since then, it's been nothing but wins for the Wolverines. So much so that @UMichBaseball has adopted a new twitter name.

After beating and shutting out Northwestern twice in yesterday's weather-imposed doubleheader, Michigan looked for the sweep of the series today at Rocky Miller Park in Evanston.

The game did not start out well. Northwestern jumped out to a 2-0 lead through 4 innings. Michigan finally got on the board in the top of the 5th on a wild pitch that allowed Ako Thomas to score cutting the Wildcat lead in half.

In the next inning, another Northwestern gaffe produced another run for Michigan as Ako Thomas knocked the ball between the legs of the NU 2B, allowing Miles Lewis and Brock Keener to score putting Michigan ahead 3-2.

A Northwestern leadoff homer in the bottom of the 6th inning tied the game at 3-3 and it would remain tied until the top of the 9th.

Dom Clementi's 2-RBI triple broke the tie to give Michigan a 5-3 lead. The Wolverine tacked on two more runs with an RBI single by B1G Freshman of the Week Jesse Franklin and a Brock Keener RBI double. 

William Tribucher got the final 3 outs in the bottom of the 9th and Michigan completed the comeback win. A great game to watch and another W on the schedule. 

Michigan beats Northwestern, 5-3, extending the incredible win streak to 15 games. This was a series that was a must-sweep if you want to win a B1G Championship. 

Michigan is now 19-11 and 6-0 in the B1G.

Next up is an always tough Maryland team next weekend back at home at Ray Fisher Stadium. Erik Bakich will host his former team for a 3 game weekend series beginning on Friday at 4pm.

Wolverine Devotee

April 8th, 2018 at 6:48 PM ^

A lot can happen between now and then. We're 74 in RPI right now. 

We don't play Indiana, Minnesota or OSU who are some of the better teams in the B1G and while Nebraska has a losing record, they're always dangerous. We don't play them either.

Iowa at 40 in the RPI is the best team on our schedule remaining followed by Illinois at 45. We get Iowa on the road April 27-29 and Illinois at home May 11-13.

Alton

April 8th, 2018 at 7:38 PM ^

Give credit to Michigan's new pitching coach, Chris Fetter.  Even with Alec Rennard being (?) injured (does anybody have any information on this?), Michigan has posted a 1.00 ERA over their first 6 conference games.

Yes, it's just MSU and Northwestern, perennial cellar dwellers in the conference, but this is a good start for the conference season.  I do think that the team will most likely have to win the conference tournament to move on to the NCAA tournament, but working their way to a #1 conference finish and keeping a good record over the next month and a half might change things. 

It's still just barely possible for Michigan to hit 38 wins without winning the conference tournament, and 38 tends to be the magic number for a Big Ten team in an average season.

 

Lampuki22

April 8th, 2018 at 9:19 PM ^

I follow college baseball pretty closely. Particularly michigan. they literally played no one in those last 15 games and lost nearly every game they played put west. In the one impressive win they have ( #2 Stanford) Stanford threw off and we pitched Kaufman, our ace. 15 games is impressive but don’t get too excited this is still just a rebuilding team.

BlueChip27

April 8th, 2018 at 10:10 PM ^

You'd have come on here bitching if M had lost multiple games during this streak so don't come on here and poo-poo that they got the job done.

The program is building and improvong so let's give credit where credit is due.