MSU baseball ends skid with wild win in 13th
EAST LANSING – Jake Boss told Matt Byars to make sure he touched first base after subtly predicting the winning hit.
Turned out, Byars didn’t have to. A deep fly ball was exactly what Michigan State needed.
It took 4 hours, 13 minutes and a career-long relief performance by pitcher Dakota Mekkes for the Spartans to finally outlast Maryland, 4-3 on Friday at McLane Stadium. Byars’ bases-loaded sacrifice fly scored Brandon Hughes with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning, also securing MSU a spot in the Big Ten Tournament.
“Maybe guys are getting a little mentally tired, physically tired,” junior catcher Byars said. “But at this time of year, if you need somebody to motivate you, you’ve got something wrong with you.”
The Spartans (34-17, 13-10 Big Ten) snapped a four-game losing streak that has put a potential NCAA tournament berth in jeopardy. They had lost their last three in Big Ten play, which also left them teetering on missing the conference tournament for the first time since 2013 and just the third time in Boss’ eighth season at MSU.
Five years earlier to the day, the Spartans won their first Big Ten championship in 32 years. Friday, they needed to scratch and claw to simply earn their way back to the postseason.
Yet the postgame joy mirrored each other, as the players mobbed Byars and doused him with water near first base after his game-winning RBI.
“We had been skidding for the past couple weeks, and we came into this weekend thinking we just had to get one,” Byars said. “It’s important for us to be in the postseason. It just feels really good to get that win right there after being on a four-game losing streak.”
It nearly didn’t happen. Hughes got hit by a pitch with one out in the 13th, then Jordan Zimmerman singled into right field. However, Hughes stumbled running between second and third base and got in a rundown, injuring his right wrist while somehow diving around a tag attempt at third base.
After an intentional walk to Dan Durkin loaded the bases, Byars lofted a fly ball to deep right field to score Hughes and trigger the celebration.
“I’m just really proud of our guys,” MSU coach Jake Boss said. “I thought they really competed well. We probably weren’t as sharp and certainly made our share of mistakes, but they just kept coming at them and grinding. We gave ourselves multiple opportunities and finally cashed in on one.”
Mekkes, MSU’s closer, entered the game with a runner on third base in the eighth inning and gave up an RBI groundout that allowed Maryland (27-25, 12-11) to send the game to extra innings.
That’s when the sophomore right-hander hit his stride, allowing just one hit and striking out six over his six innings of work. He retired the Terps’ final 11 batters.
“I’m always ready to go as many innings as I need to,” said Mekkes who improved to 3-1 on the season. “If coach would have tried to, I would have told him no shot, you’re not taking (the ball) away from me right now. …
“We needed to win one of these games to get into the tournament, and that’s what we came out here to do.”
The two teams wrap up the regular season at 1:05 p.m. Saturday at McLane. Right-hander Andrew Gonzalez will start for MSU instead of ace Cam Vieaux. Boss said his left-handed ace might pitch an inning to get back while getting back on normal rest to start the Spartans’ opener in the Big Ten Tournament, which begins Wednesday.
“We’ll sleep a little bit better tonight knowing we’re going to continue to play in Omaha,” Boss said. “(Saturday) is a big day, and we talked about it afterward. Just because we’re mathematically in the tournament now, I don’t think that changes our approach mentally what we need to do. We have an opportunity to get a higher seed and continue to get some momentum going into the tournament.”