Kansas State and Kansas baseball will enter a rubber match on Sunday to decide the Sunflower Showdown after a 4-0 Jayhawk victory Saturday, May 4.
Kansas star freshman pitcher Dominic Voegele — who’s now 7-2 — led the way with six scoreless innings. K-State left eight runners on base, failing to score in big situations.
“The game came down to getting a hit with runners on base and getting a two-out hit,” head coach Pete Hughes said. “Kansas was able to do that and we were not.”
K-State struggled to find a rhythm at the plate through the six innings against Voegele. The Wildcats managed to have two runners on base, with one in Voegele’s final inning, but failed to bring in a run — a trend that kicked into the next couple innings.
The Wildcats again left runners on first and second with one out in the seventh. In the eighth inning, K-State held bases loaded with two outs. For the third time in the game, umpires issued a scoring review as second baseman Brady Day narrowly slid into second base on a grounder. The call went Kansas’ way and kept K-State down 4-0.
“It’s exhausting, it’s not good,” Hughes said about the long reviews. “You want them to get the call right … I’m not sure what the solution is. I do know that everybody wants to get it right, and for the most part I think they did that today.”
The bats for Kansas started off slow as well, as Wildcat starting pitcher Jackson Wentworth escaped a one-out bases loaded jam in the second inning. Wentworth managed runners often in his appearance, but wouldn’t keep Kansas off the board all day.
After four scoreless innings, the Jayhawks brought in two fifth inning runs. The Wildcats saved themselves from a 3-0 deficit with a throw-out at the plate, but the Lawrence rivals expanded the lead later, scoring a run in the sixth and seventh inning as Wentworth left after the fifth with seven strikeouts.
The series moves to a deciding game at 1 p.m. Sunday. Kansas snapped a seven-game losing streak in the Sunflower Showdown.
“Tomorrow’s huge for a lot of reasons,” Hughes said. “They’re our rival — for our postseason resume it’s really big … coming down to tomorrow should be fun. [It’s] what it’s all about, but there are some high stakes involved.”
