THE BASICS:
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- Records: MIT (10-16-1, 5-6 NEWMAC); Babson College (20-9, 9-2 NEWMAC)
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- Score: MIT 8, Babson College 6
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- Location: Cambridge, Mass. (Fran O'Brien Field)
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- The Lead: Trailing by a 5-1 margin, the MIT baseball team rallied past first-place Babson College for an 8-6 victory on Friday afternoon in the first game of a three-game weekend series. The win snaps Babson's nine-game winning streak as the Engineers won their second straight game.
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HOW IT HAPPENED:
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- Babson got on the board in the top of the third as
Francis Kiely led off the inning with a solo homer to left for the 1-0 lead. The Engineers answered in the bottom of the inning when first-year
Malachi Soqui (Castaic, Calif.) scored on a two-out RBI single by junior
Graham Cartwright (La Jolla, Calif.) to knot the game at 1-1.
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- The big inning for the Beavers came in the top of the third as they struck for four runs on three hits.
Jackson Kelly's double to left scored a pair, while
Josh Yellen's sacrifice fly plated
Thomas Lapham for the 5-1 advantage.
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- To start the fourth, sophomore
Karl Meyer (Indianapolis, Ind.) came on in relief for MIT and kept the Beavers off the board until the eighth inning. MIT chipped away at the Babson lead with a single run in the fourth and fifth as junior
Erik Anderson (Palos Verdes, Calif.) picked up an RBI single in the fourth and junior
Kyle Sonandres (Torrance, Calif.) homered for the third time in two games in the fifth to cut it to 5-3.
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- MIT's big inning came in the bottom of the seventh as senior
Cory O'Shea (Glen Allen, Va.) led off with a first-pitch solo homer to left for the 5-4 margin. Sophomore
Michael Finch (Brentwood, Tenn.) doubled to left center to score both Sonandres brothers and give the Engineers their first lead at 6-5. Senior
Nick Aiello (Freehold, N.J.) followed with an RBI double to left center, along with another Anderson RBI single that chased Babson reliever
William Cournan from the game.
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- With two runners on in the eighth, first-year
Brian Rapanan (Gurnee, Ill.) came on in relief as
Patrick Manning scored an unearned run before the Engineers got out of the jam. In the ninth, Rapanan notched a pair of strikeouts and secured the 8-6 victory and his first save of the season.
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INSIDE THE NUMBERS:
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- MIT outhit the Beavers by a 14-7 margin, including three hits from Anderson and two each from
Kyle Sonandres, Finch and Cartwright. For Babson, Kelly and Kiely had two hits each to go along with a pair of runs batted in.
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- Junior
Matt Leonard (San Antonio, Texas) went three innings in the no-decision, while Meyer improved to 1-0 on the season after 4.2 innings of two-hit relief with four strikeouts. Rapanan went 1.1 innings, allowing no hits with two strikeouts for the save.
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Anthony St. John went 6.1 innings in the start as he allowed 10 hits and five runs with three strikeouts and no walks. Cournan took the loss to fall to 1-1 as he lasted just a third of an inning with three runs and four hits allowed.
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UP NEXT:
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- MIT is back in action on Saturday, April 23rd as the Engineers travel to Babson College for a NEWMAC doubleheader beginning at Noon.
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