Michigan Baseball: Michigan beats Purdue 6-1 to move into Championship Game

from MGoBlue.com
http://www.mgoblue.com/baseball/article.aspx?id=138680

Mahler Provides Key Hit as Fetter Shackles Purdue

May 23, 2008
Site: Ann Arbor, Mich. (Wilpon Complex)
Event: Big Ten Tournament
Score: #18 Michigan 6, Purdue 1
Records: U-M (44-12), Purdue (31-25)
Next Game: Saturday, May 24 -- vs. Purdue or Indiana (Wilpon Complex), 7:05 p.m.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The No. 18-ranked University of Michigan baseball team defeated the Purdue Boilermakers by a 6-1 count Friday night (May 23) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex to advance to the Big Ten Tournament championship game. Junior RHP Chris Fetter (Carmel, Ind./Carmel HS) improved to 10-1 on the season, allowing just one run and scattering four hits over seven innings. He fanned 10 batters for his third double-digit strikeout performance of the season.

Junior shortstop SS Jason Christian (Loveland, Ohio/Loveland HS) hit a solo home run in the third inning to tie the score at 1-1 and chalked up another run scored on Leif Mahler's (Columbus, Ohio/St. Charles Prep HS) two-run, go-ahead single during U-M's three-run fifth inning. The Wolverines sewed up the win over the No. 2-seeded Boilermakers with two insurance runs in the eighth frame.

Purdue took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on an RBI single up the middle by Jonathan Lilly. Jordan Comadena worked a full count before earning a free pass to first base with one out. A wild pitch let Comadena scamper to second before Lilly drove him in. After another Purdue single and a sacrifice bunt, Fetter was faced with runners on second and third with two outs, but the junior hurler induced a fly ball to centerfield to end the threat.

Christian responded an inning and a half later with a two-out, opposite-field blast over the leftfield wall to knot the score at one run apiece. It was the 71st jack of the year for the Wolverines. Christian, a lefthanded hitter, has hit five of his seven homers off lefthanded pitching.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Wolverines chased Purdue starter Kyle Cook by scoring three runs on three hits to go up 4-1. Freshman RF Ryan LaMarre (Jackson, Mich./Lumen Christi HS) walked and moved up 90 feet when neither Purdue middle infielder covered second base on Christian's grounder to third base. The Wolverine baserunners advanced a base on a wild pitch to set up a two-RBI, opposite-field hit from Mahler, who knocked the Wolverine pair in -- and the starting pitcher out -- by slashing an outside pitch into right field.

Two batters later, junior DH Zach Putnam (Ann Arbor, Mich./Pioneer HS) crushed an offering from reliever Kevin Cahill into left-centerfield for an RBI double. Junior 3B Adam Abraham (Grosse Pointe Park, Mich./South HS) singled to put runners on the corners, but Purdue's third pitcher of the inning, Andy Loomis, got out of the jam with a strike-'em-out, throw-'em-out double play.

Fetter got himself into mild trouble in the sixth inning by walking the leadoff man and then issuing a free pass with two down, but he got pinch-hitter Drew Madia to ground out to first to end the inning.

The Maize and Blue padded its lead with two runs in the eighth inning. Senior LF/1B Derek VanBuskirk (St. Clair, Mich./St. Clair HS) ripped an RBI double and was driven home one at-bat later by senior/junior OF Kenny Fellows (Holt, Mich./Holt HS), who had been inserted as a defensive replacement just an inning earlier.

Junior RHP Michael Powers (St. Clair Shores, Mich./South Lake HS) relieved Fetter to start the eighth inning and earned his second save in as many days. The Wolverine senior/junior struck out three batters in two innings of relief, allowing just one baserunner -- a two-out single in the eighth.

As a result of the tournament's double-elimination format, Michigan will have two chances to defeat either Indiana or Purdue to capture the Big Ten Tournament crown. U-M will face the winner of tomorrow afternoon's Indiana-Purdue match-up at 7:05 p.m. at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of Ray Fisher Stadium. If necessary, a winner-take-all championship game would be played at noon Sunday (May 25).