No. 21 Texas A&M followed up its walk-off win Saturday night with a 5-0 victory over the Sacramento State Hornets (4-4, 0-0 WAC) Sunday afternoon at Olsen Field.
Junior Cole Lankford had two RBI’s and scored two runs of his own in the Aggies (6-1, 0-0 SEC) sixth win of the season. Lankford also had a stolen base on the day. Junior Logan Nottebrok scored two runs as well to aid in the victory.
Sophomore Grayson Long was on the mound for the Aggies, giving up five hits in seven innings of work on 97 pitches. Long induced 15 fly ball outs on the way to his first win of the season.
“In the fifth and sixth inning I started to feel a lot stronger,” Long said. “They hit the ball really well. Teams are going to get better and better from here on out.”
The Aggie lineup worked pitch counts and managed to get Hornets freshman Jared Paderez off the mound after four innings. Paderez had a final line of four innings pitched, four hits and three runs given up.
Junior Mitchell Nau had an RBI double to put A&M up 5-0, where the score would remain. Nau said he was able to step up Sunday but said anyone in the lineup could do the same.
“We are so deep this year offensively,” Nau said. “We probably have the deepest offense in the whole country. It’s got to be hard to write out [this] lineup. You can put any player in at any given time and [he] could be very successful.”
A&M head coach Rob Childress said he would rather be 7-0 but is happy with the series win.
“I feel like we’ve played pretty good baseball for the seven games we have played so far,” Childress said. “I think offensively the thing I’m most impressed with is that the guys who have gotten the opportunity to play, they’ve made the most of it. They are all competitive.”
Senior RHP Jason Jester came in to pitch the ninth inning for A&M. After two hits put runners on the corners for Sacramento State, Jester worked his way out of the inning to give the Aggies the series victory over the Hornets.
“I’m glad it wasn’t a clean inning for Jester and he had runners on and had to pitch out of some jams,” Childress said. “I’m glad that it went that way for him and for us.”
The game lasted for two hours and 25 minutes in front of a crowd of 3,947. A&M next hits Olsen Field on Tuesday against Houston Baptist with the first pitch scheduled for 6:35 p.m.