LAKELAND, Fla.—Southeastern wrapped up its fifth straight Sun Conference regular season title by completing their four-game sweep of St. Thomas on Saturday with a 14-4 win to pick up their 41
st win of the season.
The Fire got some help just to the south when Warner defeated Webber International 6-3 to give the Fire a five-game lead in the standings with four remaining.
"We set a goal at the beginning of the year to win the regular season and to do it with four games left is an unbelievable accomplishment for the guys and the work ethic and drive they have," said coach
Adrian Dinkel.
After surrendering a two-out, two-run homer in the first, the Fire came back with three in the second with two scoring on an error and a
Matt Delay RBI single to right.
The Bobcats tied it back up with an RBI double in the next inning, but
Josh Smith's fourth homer of the series, a two-run shot to left followed by a no-doubter over the left field wall by
Isaac Nunez to make it 6-3.
Josh Pigozzo doubled home a pair of runs in the fourth to push the lead to five but a sixth-inning error got the Bobcats a run back.
Southeastern then cranked out six runs over the next two innings to end the game by run rule.
After Nunez scored on a fielding error,
Cristopher Munoz pushed the lead to six with an RBI single in the seventh, and
Landrey Wilkerson's infield single scored
Tommy Davis. Davis also drove in a run in the eighth following a sacrifice fly by
Alfonso Villalobos. Munoz hit a two-out single to left field to score Nunez and finish the contest.
"It's been different groups of guys with all with the same goals and all finding out the only way to win something like this consistently is to trust each other," said Nunez of being part of his third straight Sun Conference regular season championship. "I have so much faith in every pitcher and every hitter that comes to the plate to get the job done."
Munoz finished with a team-best three RBIs and joined
David Castillo, Nunez, and Villalobos with two hits each.
"I think being more competitive and seeing better pitches has been the key at the plate," said Dinkel. "We struggled early but that's not who they are; we have too many really good players to struggle that long and I think we're finally starting to hit our stride at the right time."
On the mound,
Ramsey David struck out six over four innings and was relieved by
Danny Batcher who picked up the win with 3.1 innings of work and did not allow an earned run on two hits and a walk and recorded two strikeouts.
The Fire will head to West Palm Beach next Thursday to start its final series of the season with Keiser.
