Maryland Blows Out Delaware, 8-0

Maryland baseball continued their strong start to the season with a thrashing of Delaware at home Tuesday afternoon, winning by a final score of 8-0.

Maryland started the scoring in the third with a Tomo Delp RBI single, scoring Alfredo Rodriguez. In the seventh, Maryland’s bats really came alive, blowing the game wide open and putting the score out of reach. Charlie White led off the inning with a double, and Jeremy Hagel followed up with a sacrifice bunt. Delaware’s pitcher, Matt Harden, had an errant throw, scoring White. After a Jack Cleary sacrifice bunt moved Hagel to second, A-Rod walked. Korey Wacker grounded out to Harden, putting runners on second and third with two outs. Tomo Delp was walked, bringing up Ryan Holland with the bases loaded. Holland tripled off the right field wall, scoring all three runners and giving the Terps a 5-0 lead. Holland later scored on a catcher’s balk. I had never seen that before, so here it is, out of the rulebook:

"“The catcher shall station himself directly back of the plate. He may leave his position at any time to catch a pitch or make a play except that when the batter is being given an intentional base on balls, the catcher must stand with both feet within the lines of the catcher’s box until the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. PENALTY: Balk.”"

The Terps scored two more runs in the eighth off RBI singles from A-Rod and Korey Wacker.

The story of the game, as has been the case recently, was the strong pitching from Maryland. Chuck Ghysels, who has been the closer for much of the year, started the game on the mound, and pitched three scoreless innings. Jimmy Reed and Michael Boyden followed up with two scoreless innings apiece, and Brady Kirkpatrick pitched one more shutout frame. Wacker moved to the mound from center to pitch the ninth, and set the Blue Hens in order to end the game.

Maryland starts ACC play this weekend at Georgia Tech. They’ve played very well in their out of conference slate, now it’s time to see how they cut it in one of the most competitive conferences in college baseball.