Maryland baseball uses strong middle innings to down Bryant, 11-7, securing series sweep

Alex Walsh took the mound for the Terps in the top of the ninth. Each team seemingly scored at will all game, but Walsh got the Bulldogs in order in a stress free inning for Maryland.

The Terps came out on top in a back-and-forth affair against Bryant in College Park on Sunday, 11-7. Maryland used strong middle innings, outscoring the Bulldogs 8-0 between the fourth and sixth innings, to secure the win that gave the Terps their first series sweep in coach Matt Swope’s tenure.

“Sweeping is not easy,” Swope said. “I still think we need to get better in a lot of different areas. But if you can score 11 runs and sweep on a Sunday at the end of the day, I’ll feel good about that.”

Eddie Hacopian wasted no time getting the bats going for the Terps (9-3), smoking the game’s first pitch into the gap in right-center field for a lead-off double. That allowed Chris Hacopian to drive home his brother for the fourth time this year, grounding a ball between third base and shortstop.

But the Bulldogs’ (1-7) starting pitcher, Tyler Horvat, quieted Maryland after the first inning, retiring seven straight Terps, but then the lineup broke through in the fourth. Alex Calarco broke through with a bang — hitting a moonshot to straightaway center — and Ben Nardi’s first RBI of the season provided key runs. 

“You could see [Calarco’s] power so prodigious,” Swope said. “He can change the game in one swing. So we just need him to continue to take these strides, and the better he is, the better we’re going to be as the season goes.”

Horvat was relieved in the fifth inning, and Bryant’s relief pitchers had trouble finding the zone. Two arms combined for four walks and three hit batters, allowing Maryland to score twice and go in front for its first lead of the game.

The Terps’ lead only came after their starter, Joey McMannis, was relieved as his early struggles put the team into a deficit. 

McMannis made his first start for Maryland, and leadoff walks troubled him in the first few innings. A leadoff walk to Shea Grady in the top of the second allowed him to score and tie the game on a sacrifice fly, and then another leadoff free pass in the third allowed Gavin Noriega to give the Bulldogs their first lead at 3-1 on a line drive homerun to center field.

McMannis went 2.1 innings, allowing three runs on three hits and four walks. The third frame could’ve been much worse, as McMannis left reliever Logan Berrier with a bases loaded scenario. But Berrier limited the damage to just the two runs off McMannis earlier in the inning, inducing a strikeout and a flyout to end the threat.

Berrier’s strong relief outing, throwing 3.2 scoreless innings, set Maryland’s offense up to chip away and then eventually go in front in the bottom of the fifth.

“[It] was huge,” Swope said about Berrier’s relief performance. “That was literally the game.”

The Terps appeared to blow the game open in the sixth, scoring four runs on three hits. Jacob Orr got the scoring started in the inning after he got a free pass on a balk, then hits from Calarco and Elijah Lambros added three more runs to extend the lead to 9-3. 

“My swing is completely different,” Calarco said. “I started open last year [and] now [I’m] starting a little closed now. Just getting with Swope every day and making small adjustments…it’s really exciting what I’m doing.”

Calarco is coming off Tommy John surgery and said he aims to be back playing his natural position of catcher by the Michigan State series.

But the Bulldogs responded with a four-run inning of their own in the top of the seventh. A wild pitch and a pick-off attempt that left Justin Hackett in a jam on the bases allowed Bryant to score twice. Then Daniel Baruch cut the deficit back to two, blasting a no-doubt home run over the wall in left-center field.

The Terps gave themselves some breathing room in the eighth as they capitalized on mistakes from the Bulldogs’ defense. A wild pitch allowed Lambros to score and an error scored Orr to give Maryland a cushion at 11-7, and Bryant couldn’t string together anything offensively in the top of the ninth to avoid the sweep defeat.