Baseball Falls to Fairfield in First Game of Spring Trip

Wednesday, March 16

Auburndale, Fla. / Lake Myrtle Park

1:00 PM

Dartmouth College

3-5

Fairfield

6-8

Dartmouth

Fairfield

Kade Kretzschmar

Photo by: Willis Glassgow

Baseball Falls to Fairfield in First Game of Spring Trip

3/16/2022 7:27:00 PM | Baseball

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Big Green collected eight hits including a homer by Kolton Freeman in the 7-3 defeat

By: Rick Bender

AUBURNDALE, Fla. — Senior Kade Kretzschmar had two of Dartmouth's eight hits while junior Kolton Freeman cranked his third homer of the year, but Fairfield scored three runs in the first and never looked back in defeating the Big Green (3-5) on Wednesday afternoon at Lake Myrtle Park, 7-3. Evan Berta banged out three singles and scored three times from the top of the order to lead the Stags (6-8) to their third win the last four games.

The three runs in the first for Fairfield came without the aid of a hit as Dartmouth starter Brady Chappell (0-1) suffered through a bout of wildness at the outset of the game. A walk, hit batter and fielding error loaded the bases with nobody out before Chappell forced in the first two runs with another walk and hit batsman. The first out came on a force at the plate, but Matt Zaffino lofted a fly to right that allowed the third run to cross the plate.

One of the two unearned runs in the first was given back in the top of the second as a throwing error on a grounder to third allowed Kretzschmar, who led off the frame with a base hit, to score from second.

Another favor was returned in the third as Dartmouth scored a run without a hit to close the gap to one. Sophomore Tyler Robinson was plunked with one down, took second on a wild pitch, advanced to third on a grounder to first and scampered home on another wild offering.

Chappell, meanwhile, had settled down and was on the verge of finishing a clean third when he hit Matt Venuto with a pitch, one of three times the Stags' right fielder would get drilled. Consecutive singles by Zaffino and Colin Kelly allowed Venuto to scoot home to make it a 4-2 game at the end of three innings.

Berta singled and scored on a double off the bat of Mike Caruso to start the bottom of the fourth before a lightning delay halted play for nearly an hour. When play resumed, reliever Luke Carpenter shook off his rough start and escaped without any further damage, leaving the bases loaded.

Fairfield did tack on two more runs in the fifth, however, starting with a hit batsmen. Berta delivered a one-out RBI single and scored on another Caruso double.

The final run of the contest came on Freeman's solo home run with one gone in the seventh, though the Big Green threatened to score more. Junior Connor Bertsch extended his hitting streak to a modest five games with a single, and freshman Jackson Hower followed with a pinch-hit double, sending reliever Bowen Baker to the showers. Colin McVeigh came on and got a called third strike before loading the bases by hitting Robinson (his second of the game). But he induced a grounder to Kelly at shortstop who flipped to Mike Becchetti covering second for the force to end the threat.

The Big Green put two men on base in the ninth, but that was all they could do as closer Jack Anderson got the final two outs on popups.

Baker (1-0), who surrendered one run on four hits with four strikeouts in 2.1 innings, earned the win in relief of Grant Smeltzer, who exited after the lightning delay. He gave up two runs, one earned, on two hits over four frames.

Chappell (0-1) took the loss for yielding four runs, two earned, on four hits, two walks and three hit batters in three stanzas.

The Big Green return to Lake Myrtle Park tomorrow at 1 p.m. to take on Central Connecticut State (3-4).

Notes: This is the fifth time since 1969 that Dartmouth pitchers have hit six batters in a game … Bryce Daniel had a pinch-hit single for the Big Green, , which, along with Hower's pinch double, gave Dartmouth two pinch hits in the same game for the first time in almost exactly five years — March 17, 2017 at The Citadel … Freeman's three home runs tie him with Bertsch for the team lead.