Jordan Foley's career-high 12 strikeouts leads baseball to win over Northern Illinois
Sophomore pitcher Jordan Foley struck out a career-high 12 batters in the baseball team’s 6-3 win over Northern Illinois at Theunissen Stadium Friday afternoon.
Still, the native of The Colony, Texas was critical of his performance after the game.
“The strikeouts don’t even really matter to me,” Foley said. “I had five walks today and my pitch count got up so I wasn’t able to stay in the game as long.”
Foley gave up three runs and six hits over six and two-thirds of an inning.
He took a shutout into the seventh inning. With his team leading 5-0, the right hander got the first two outs of the inning, but then things got interesting. A throwing error by junior shortstop Noel Santos allowed the first NIU run to score to make it 5-1. One batter later, the score was 5-3 after a 2-run double by Landon Tenhagen which forced Foley from the game.
With the tying run at the plate, junior Kenton San Miguel came on to get the final out and keep CMU in the lead.
“I would have loved for that inning to go a little bit differently,” Foley said. “It’s my job to go out there and stop innings like that. I wanted to be aggressive and go after hitters.”
As they have for most of the season, it was the Regnier brothers who go CMU on the board in the second inning. After senior Jordan Adams and sophomore catcher Alex Ornelas were walked, sophomore Nick delivered an RBI-single through the left side to make it 1-0.
Two batters later, his brother Logan drove in two more runs on a single past the NIU first basemen.
The Chippewas extended their lead in the third inning thanks to some sloppy play by the Huskies. Freshman Neal Jacobs led off the inning with a single and came around to score when Adams hit a long fly ball to left field which was misplayed by NIU. Adams scored the fifth run for CMU on a throwing error by the NIU catcher.
The Huskies loaded the bases against Foley in the sixth, but the sophomore got Connor Duckhorn to line out softly to shortstop to end the threat and preserve the shut out.
The Chippewas made it 6-3 in the seventh inning when Adams hit his third home run of the season, a solo shot to left field.
“This was a real good win for us today,” said head coach Steve Jaksa. “We made one mistake but that was really it all day. I thought our guys were ready to play and were in the game early, that’s what we needed.”
Logan Regnier led the Chippewas at the plate, going 2-for-4 with 2 RBI. Nick Regnier was 2-for-5 with an RBI.
The Chippewas and Huskies play the middle game of their series Saturday at 2:05 p.m. Sophomore Dylan Rheault will start for CMU.
