Citadel Sets 2017 Scoring Mark In 34-8 Rout Of Winthrop

The Citadel exploded for 34 runs Tuesday night in a 34-8 blowout of Winthrop, the most runs scored in a Division I college game this season.

The Bulldogs (5-10) topped the 32-run game that McNeese State had against Louisiana-Monroe on Feb. 21, and also found their way into The Citadel record books, scoring 38.6 percent of their runs so far this year in just eight innings.

“You just can’t question a game of baseball,” Citadel coach Fred Jordan said, “It (never) ceases to amaze you.”

The 34 runs and 34 hits that Jordan’s offense tallied are both records for a single game at The Citadel. The previous records for each were set on April 5, 1982 when the Bulldogs scored 27 runs on 32 hits against Davidson.

“I just think we were locked in,” Jordan said. “(Winthrop), obviously in the middle innings when the game got expanded, they went out to some of their younger guys to get them some work. But you know, Winthrop has an outstanding program, an outstanding pitching staff and were picked very high in the Big South. I was just very proud for our players.”

Senior DH Barrett Charpia and junior two-way player Jonathan Sabo each had a pair of home runs and set new program records with eight at-bats. Charpia was responsible for nine RBIs (one shy of another Citadel record) and a pair of runs, and Sabo chipped in with six runs and five RBIs.

Junior shortstop William Kinney—who was 6-for-7—tied the school record with four doubles.

Thirty of the 34 runs were earned as Winthrop (7-9) starter Thad Harris could only get two outs in the first inning as the Bulldogs bullied him for six hits, five runs and three walks.

“Normally in an expanded game there’s a lot of walks, a lot of errors,” Jordan said of the game, which featured just one error for each team. “But for the most part it was a fairly clean-played game. Our guys just had a phenomenal day offensively. Made great contact, had great pitch discipline and put one heck of a game together.”

Seven of the nine pitchers the Eagles used allowed three runs or more, while none pitched longer than two innings. Only junior lefty Riley Arnone got out unscathed, throwing a scoreless seventh inning.

In total, Winthrop needed 253 pitches, and saw its team ERA jump from 7.90 to 9.42. The loss was the worst in program history for the Eagles, both in terms of runs allowed and margin of defeat. Winthrop will try and bounce back Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET against Charleston Southern.

Jordan is hoping that the spark Tuesday will carry over to this weekend’s series against Dartmouth, which is coming off winning two-of-three at Miami in a series that included a pair of shutouts.

“Hopefully this will jumpstart us and get us going . . . We’re going to have to be on point from an offensive standpoint and obviously from a pitching standpoint too,” he said, speaking to the difficulty of shutting out the Hurricanes twice at Alex Rodriguez Park. “It’ll be a great weekend and hopefully we can use the experience from yesterday to help us this coming weekend.”