EDINBURG – The Sam Houston Bearkats evened up its series with UTRGV on Saturday night, taking down the Vaqueros, 5-1, at the UTRGV Baseball Stadium.
Sam Houston (28-21, 18-8 WAC) never trailed in the game, getting another strong start from left-hander
Steven Beard and scoring four early runs against the Vaqueros (30-22, 15-11 WAC), including a 3-hit night from
Christian Smith and a 2-RBI night from
Carlos Contreras.
Beard picked up his sixth win of the year, including three victories in his last four starts. He did not register a strikeout, but scattered six hits over across 6.1 innings of work and did not allow a run until the seventh. Reliever
Braden Davis tossed 1.2 bridge innings with a pair of strikeouts before
Lance Lusk came in and struck out two in a scoreless ninth inning.
UTRGV starter Jesus Aldaz struck out seven hitters of his own and walked just one, but was touched up for four runs in his 6.0 innings on the hill, taking the loss to fall to 5-5 on the year.
Beard worked around runners on base in each of the first three innings and got an early lead to work with when Contreras led off the second inning with a solo home run to straightaway center field off of Aldaz.
One inning later the Kats tacked on two more, starting the inning with back-to-back doubles by Smith and
Anthony MacKenzie before a sacrifice fly by
Justin Wishkoski. An inning later Smith continued his big night with a 2-out RBI single to score
Myles Jefferson and give the Kats a 4-0 advantage.
Beard continued to be efficient with clean innings in both the fifth and sixth before Freddy Rojas Jr. finally got to him with an opposite-field solo homer to start off the seventh.
UTRGV managed to put together even more of a threat in the inning, getting the tying run to the plate before freshman reliever
Braden Davis was able to end the inning with a strikeout of Brandon Pimentel.
Sam Houston and UTRGV will close out its series on Sunday with a noon first pitch on ESPN+.
