Southeast Missouri State baseball team evens series with Austin Peay

With a couple of rocky starts in his last two outings out of the way, Southeast Missouri State starting pitcher Travis Hayes knew it was time to change the focus in the second game of a three-game series against Austin Peay on Saturday afternoon.

A challenge from Southeast coach Steve Bieser and pitching coach Lance Rhodes was exactly what he needed to hear.

"The biggest difference for me today was the emphasis my coaches drilled in my head about throwing first-pitch strikes," Hayes said. "In my last couple starts that's what I kind of struggled with. When you're behind in the count you're going to get hammered sometimes. We did a lot of things this week to prevent that from happening, just kind of tweaking little mechanical stuff and having the mindset of taking it one batter at a time all week."

The advice paid off for the senior right-hander, who threw 80 of his 135 pitches for strikes and finished with a career-high 12 strikeouts to lead the Redhawks to a 3-2 victory over the Governors at Capaha Field.

With the win, Southeast (16-11, 10-4 OVC) moved into second place in the Ohio Valley Conference standings. APSU (18-12, 10-4 OVC) dropped into third place.

"I thought he needed to be challenged and get locked in early in the game, and not take anything for granted," Bieser said. "Travis has confidence. When he goes to the mound, he expects to throw nine innings of shut-out baseball. That's his mentality. But coach Rhodes and myself had to kind of talk to him about how it doesn't happen to him automatically. You've got to go out and make that happen, and I think he was very prepared to meet that challenge."

Hayes had worked his way out of trouble throughout the game, and after recording his 12th strike out to begin the ninth inning, he was just two outs away from finishing off a complete game shutout.

However, a single and a walk during the next two at bats followed by an error on third baseman Andy Lennington allowed the Governors to cut into the lead at 3-1 and forced Bieser to replace Hayes.

"Until the ninth inning when I made that error, he was cruising," Lennington said. "Obviously that's a play I need to make, and I told him that. I told him that was my bad. He should be able to throw a complete game right there, that's totally on me. You can't ask for anything else from him, that's a lights out performance."

Matt Wade recorded the second out on a fielder's choice, but the play allowed the Governors to add another run. APSU had two runners on before Wade got a pop out to end the game.

Bieser said he considered taking Hayes out after he allowed two runners to reach but decided against it because Hayes had already pitched out of two jams.

"That's when I start to look at fatigue and see if he can battle through that," Bieser said about his decision to leave Hayes in the game in the ninth. "In my mind he had the gas in the tank and he deserved to take it the rest of the way. It's just unfortunate that the error happens to him after he had made it to that spot." Hayes allowed two runs on four hits in 8 1/3 innings and worked out of bases loaded situations in the fifth and eighth innings. With no outs and the bases loaded in the fifth, Hayes got Alex Robles to hit a soft grounder right back to him. He quickly threw it back to home plate for a force out before catcher Scott Mitchell fired the ball to first to complete a 1-2-3 double play. Hayes retired the final out of the inning on a groundball to first base.

"With bases loaded and no outs, about 90 percent of the time in Division I they're going to score," Hayes said. "So in my mind I was fine with giving up one run there because we had the lead. The biggest thing was to just get soft contact and let my defense take care of it. It just happen to be soft contact right at me, which really helped me keep my confidence up for the rest of the game."

Southeast took an early 1-0 lead in the second, thanks to a readjustment in the Redhawks' lineup. Branden Boggetto led off the inning with an infield single and advanced to second on a balk before moving up to third on Scott Mitchell's ground out to second. That set the stage for Ryan Rippee, who hit a high pop fly to centerfield, allowing Boggetto to score easily from third.

Rippee had been batting in the cleanup spot but was moved to the eighth spot after he had struggled to produce hits in key situations, according to Bieser.

"I wanted to slide him down there to just take a little pressure off of him because we're trying to get him to work on some mechanical issues so we can eventually slide him back in there," Bieser said. "He came up in big situations just like he would've in the four hole and he did his job."

Rippee went 0 for 1 in the game, but extended the Redhawks lead to 2-0 with another sacrifice fly in the sixth inning.

Boggetto scored the Redhawks other run in the fifth after walking and scoring on an error.

"Travis deserves all the credit, but this was definitely a well-rounded team effort from our guys," Bieser said. "We put some timely hits together and bridged the gap with a quality start from Travis. That's about all you can ask for as a coach."

Southeast will look to make up more ground in the OVC standings in the rubber game against APSU today. Left-hander Alex Winkelman will get the start for the Redhawks at 1 p.m.