Coastal Carolina baseball drops series opener against Liberty

Deep fly balls off the bats of juniors Zach Remillard and Casey Schroeder in the bottom of the ninth inning Friday night gave Coastal Carolina and its fans hope that one might clear the fence for either a game-tying or game-winning home run, but it was not to be.

Liberty left fielder Nick Paxton made a sliding catch at the warning track in left-center field on Remillard’s liner for the second out of the inning and Ashton Perritt hauled in Schroeder’s blast right at the wall in center to end the game.

Liberty had rallied back from an early three-run deficit and scored in four of the final six innings to upend the Chanticleers, 7-5, in the opener of a pivotal three-game series at Springs Brooks Stadium.

“Lately balls haven’t been carrying as well. I knew I hit it pretty good, thought it was at least a double. I wasn’t sure if it was gone, but the kid put his head down, found it and made a nice play against the wall,” Remillard said. “And against Casey there, [they] ran that ball down. So there’s only so much you can do. We hit the ball hard and they made two really good defensive plays. That’s where it ended.”

The teams came in knotted in a three-way tie atop the Big South standings with Radford, which also won Friday night to put the Chants in an unfavorable position with just five games left in the race for the regular-season conference championship.

The loss also snapped Coastal Carolina’s 11-game home winning streak against rival Liberty, although the Flames have now won the last six games in the series overall.

Chants coach Gary Gilmore was brief with his comments afterward.

“They beat us. It’s frustrating. ... They were better than us tonight,” he said, leaving it at that.

Down 7-4 entering the bottom of the ninth inning, the Chants (32-16, 14-5 Big South) made things interesting when junior Anthony Marks drew a leadoff walk to finally chase Liberty ace Jared Lyons from the game and sophomore Michael Paez welcomed reliever Alex Close with a double down the left field line.

After junior Connor Owings popped out in foul territory, Remillard absolutely crushed a ball to left-center that appeared on its way out of the ballpark for a game-tying three-run homer before dying early and into the glove of Paxton, who had entered the game as a pinch-hitter before taking over in left.

Marks tagged up and scored on that flyout to make it 7-5 and sophomore G.K. Young followed with a single to put runners on the corners with two outs as Schroeder came to the plate. The team’s leading home run hitter, he blasted a ball to the deepest part of the ballpark in center and Perritt, who had moved from left to center when Paxton entered the game, caught it while bouncing softly into the wall to seal the win for the Flames (31-17, 15-4).

“We just let that one slip away from us,” Schroeder said. “We got a lead early and kind of played a little bit of sloppy baseball. ... It’s a tough one for us. I thought I got that one last inning. It just didn’t quite get out.”

The night had actually started off looking like everything was working in the Chants favor.

Leading off the bottom of the first inning, Marks got all the way to third base when starting centerfielder Aaron Stroosma appeared to slip and drop a routine fly ball. Paez followed with an RBI single, took second on a sacrifice bunt and later scored when Young laced an 0-2, two-out pitch through the right side for an RBI single.

The Chants capitalized on another Liberty error in the third when Remillard hit a grounder that looked destined to be an inning-ending double play, but second baseman Nick Salisbury couldn’t field it and Young followed with another RBI single, up the middle, to give the hosts a 3-0 lead.

But it didn’t last long.

Close, who started the game as Liberty’s first baseman, hit a leadoff home run in the fourth to make it a 3-1 game before the Flames ended up leaving the bases loaded when senior left-hander Austin Kerr got Salisbury to ground out to second.

The Chants weren’t so lucky in the fifth, though. After Kerr walked Perritt and yielded a single to Dalton Britt to open the inning, he was replaced by reliever Andrew Beckwith. The sophomore righty got a quick strikeout of Close before giving up an RBI single up the middle to Becker Sankey. After another out and an intentional walk to load the bases, Beckwith was tagged for a two-run RBI single up the middle by Andrew Yacyk to give Liberty a 4-3 lead.

Owings tied the game in the bottom of the fifth with a long solo homer to right -- his sixth of the season -- but Liberty wasn’t finished.

Yacyk ledoff the seventh with a double, Paxton followed with an RBI triple to left-center and then scored on Salisbury’s bunt single as the Flames went up 6-4. They added another run in the seventh when Schroeder threw wild from home trying pickoff a runner at third.

Lyons (8-1) earned the win for Liberty, allowing seven hits, four walks and five runs (two earned) over eight innings while notching a career-high 11 strikeouts. Close earned his sixth save.

Beckwith (4-3) was charged with the loss, giving up six hits and three earned runs in 2 2/3 innings. Kerr got the no-decision, allowing four hits, three walks and three earned runs in four innings.

Young was 4-for-5 at the plate for the Chants with two RBIs and Paez finished 3-for-4 with two runs scored and an RBI.

The Chants will look to stay in the conference race and bounce back Saturday, with the game time being moved up to 11 a.m. to avoid expected bad weather later in the day.

“You don’t want to really worry about standings. You want to go out there and win every single day and right now we’re focused on tomorrow,” Remillard said. “We want to learn from it, we don’t want to really dwell on it. We [need to] move on and hopefully salvage the weekend.”

This story was originally published May 8, 2015 at 10:50 PM with the headline "Coastal Carolina baseball drops series opener against Liberty."