Whits vs. Wildcats: Baseball at Borleske
WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- A scrappy Whitman College baseball club plays host to Linfield College, the early season leader in the Northwest Conference standings, this weekend for a three-game series at Borleske Stadium.
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| Erik Korsmo |
Whitman, under first-year coach Jared Holowaty, has won three of its last four games and takes a 3-3 NWC record into Saturday's twinbill, which gets underway at noon.
Sunday's single game also starts at noon.
Whitman and Linfield met once earlier this season in a game that doesn't count in the conference standings. As part of a tournament in McMinnville, Ore., Linfield picked off an 11-4 victory.
Junior Erik Korsmo and sophomore Eric Tolleson cracked their first home runs of the season in that game, but Linfield jumped to a 6-0 lead after three innings and made that lead hold up the rest of the way. Korsmo, Tolleson and senior Jason Sease had two hits apiece in the game.
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| Blaine Mercado |
Zach Boskovich paced the Wildcat offense with three hits. Cole Bixenman knocked in four runs with two hits, one of them a home run, while Tyson Smith had two hits, three RBI and three runs scored.
Casey Cameron tossed the first six innings for Linfield to get the win.
Korsmo, who catches, pitches and plays the outfield, continues to lead the Whitman offense with a .387 batting average on the season. He also tops the team in total hits, RBI, runs scored, doubles and slugging percentage.
In last Saturday's doubleheader sweep of Lewis & Clark, Korsmo got the pitching save in both games.
Earlier this season in a victory over Puget Sound, senior Blaine Mercado scattered three hits over nine innings to deliver a 2-1 triumph for the Missionaries.
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| Brian Kitamura |
In the six NWC games Whitman has played thus far, junior Jay Richards and senior Brian Kitamura are hitting .400 and .364, respectively. Other Whitman hitting leaderes against conference pitching are Korsmo (.333), Mercado (.316), Tolleson (.292) and Sease (.273).
Linfield's Ryan Nelson has emerged early this season as the ace of his team's pitching staff. He tossed nine-inning complete victories in each of his past two starts.
Meanwhile, senior shortstop Kelson Brown is off to a torrid start at the plate for Linfield after missing more than half of last season due to injuries. Brown is hitting .486 with five home runs, 10 doubles, 26 runs scored and 28 RBI. Except for home runs, he leads the NWC in each of those categories.
Smith is hitting .373 and leads the NWC in stolen bases, having swiped 19 in 21 attempts. Both Boskovich and Rhett Fenton hitting .400 on the season.
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CONTACT: Dave HoldenSports Information Director
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash.
509 527-5902; holden@whitman.edu