Iowa Baseball: Errors Cost Hawkeyes In Season Opener
The University of Iowa baseball team got 41 wins in 2015 partially thanks to posting the 16th-best fielding percentage in NCAA Division I. You wouldn’t have known that watching them start the 2016 campaign.
The Hawkeyes looked rusty on defense on Friday night at Dallas Baptist University, and were mostly quiet at the plate as well, wasting a stellar starting pitching performance by senior Tyler Peyton to lose 5-1.
After the teams combined to produce scoreless frames through the first two innings, the third inning was a foreshadowing of things to come. A one-out DBU single was followed by a throwing error by Peyton and a passed ball by Iowa senior catcher Daniel Aaron Moriel to allow the runner to advance to third base. The next Patriot batter got a ball deep enough to score the run.
Peyton and the Hawkeye defense would settle down from there, and in the top of the seventh inning with his team still down 1-0, Moriel redeemed himself while standing over the plate instead of crouched behind it. He looped a pitch over the left field wall, tying the game and giving Iowa some momentum heading into the late innings.
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It wasn’t long before DBU, No. 31 in the preseason NCBWA poll, took the momentum back.
After recording his sixth strikeout of the game, Peyton allowed the next batter to record a single, and Iowa head coach Rick Heller replaced him on the mound with redshirt junior Ryan Erickson. Erickson gave up another single, then got an out on a fielder’s choice.
It looked like Erickson would get the Hawkeyes out of the jam unscathed when the next batter laid down a bunt that was able to be played by Erickson, but sophomore first baseman Grant Klenovich bobbled the toss, allowing the Patriots to reclaim the lead on another unearned run.
After another run-scoring single and a walk, senior Luke Vandermaten replaced Erickson. Vandermaten gave up another run-scoring single before recording the final out of the inning. From there the DBU bullpen kept Iowa off the board and closed out the game.
Peyton took the loss despite not allowing an earned run, issuing only one walk and allowing only two hits. The Hawkeyes managed only three hits in the contest; a first-inning double by junior Mason McCoy and a third-inning single by Corbin Woods besides Moriel’s home run.
Iowa will have a chance to even up this weekend series – and its 2016 record – on Saturday at 2 p.m. CST. Sophomore righty Nick Gallagher will make the first Saturday start of his career for the Hawkeyes. Hopefully the bats and the defense will offer him more support than those elements did Peyton on Friday.