The Achilles' heel of the Park University Gilbert baseball team this season has been getting down early and having to claw back. But two outstanding performances by Jackson Moltz and Aaron de Groot in Saturday's doubleheader ensured that the Buccaneers would not have to do that today. The Bucs won game one 9-4 and game two 8-1, completing a weekend sweep of Providence Christian.
"Both did a great job, Last week, we decided to give Jackson an opportunity to pitch and he did really well," head coach Kelly Stinnett said. "And what can you say about de Groot? He came out, he had good velocity, he threw strikes. He shut them down."
Moltz had seen a fair amount of plate appearances in the season's early matchups, but his five-hit outing against the Sea Beggars was his first on the bump. Moltz went 5.1 innings and gave up just one earned run, five hits, three strikeouts and one walk.
Moltz's performance in the first game of the doubleheader made it a tall task for de Groot to top him, but he managed to pull it off. de Groot went six shutout innings and gave up just three hits, two walks and struck out nine batters. His nine K's were just one short of the school record that de Groot set versus La Sierra last season.
Stellar pitching performances did not stop with the starters. After Jared Thompson gave up two runs in the seventh inning, freshman Matthew Medina finished off the game with three shutout innings; he walked three, struck out two and picked up his second save of the season.
Game two saw much of the same from the bullpen. In his collegiate debut, Chase Provencio threw two innings of relief and struck out three. Meño Mata finished off the day with a one-run ninth inning.
Luckily, the Bucs bats did not take the pitching performances as permission to take the day off. In game one, the first six Bucs in the lineup notched a hit. Bryce Beck's performance at the dish stood above the rest; he had three hits and knocked in one run. Julian Garcia-Schroeder, Diego Bejarano and Austin Chouinard added two RBIs a piece.
The bats only got hotter in game two, as the Bucs managed some feats yet to be achieved by the program. Chouinard knocked in a run in the fourth, which was followed by a home run by Garcia-Schroeder in the bottom of the fifth- the first of his collegiate career.
It was a 3-0 game until the bottom of the seventh inning. Then, Chouinard blew things wide open with a grand slam to left-center.
Chouinard's grand slam marked the first over-the-fence grand slam and first two home run game in Buccaneers history.
The series sweep also marks the second in Buccaneers history.
"Our guys do a really good job of making adjustments," Stinnett said. "We took advantage of some opportunities to load the bases and ran really great on the bases today, so it was a good team effort, but we've got a lot of work still to do to be where we want to be in the conference."
The Buccaneers will have to wait 12 days to hit the field against. Their next matchup is scheduled for March 18 at 6 p.m. against No. 19 Benedictine-Mesa at Indian School Park.
