Baseball Takes Southwestern Series with 4-2 Win on Senior Day

SEGUIN, Texas -- Texas Lutheran Baseball secured a pivotal series win with a 4-2 win over Southwestern on Saturday at Katt-Isbel Field.

The Bulldogs (26-13, 16-4 SCAC) will go for the series sweep over the Pirates in the regular season finale on Sunday at noon. Sunday's game is the second annual Mark Love Game, which will honor a senior with the Mark Love Award prior to Sunday's game. All streaming and live stats links can be found on tlubulldogs.com.

Prior to Saturday's game, Texas Lutheran honored its 12 seniors: Blake Cappadona (Mont Belvieu/Barbers Hill), Blade Strzelczyk (San Antonio/East Central), Noah Kellum (Leander/Leander), Asher Bonnell, Payton Dahl (Round Rock/Cedar Ridge), Holden Philippus, Randy Huerta, Alec Sanchez (Waxahachie/Waxahachie), Joseph De Luna (Richwood/Boling), Kai Hendershot (San Antonio/Johnson), Joe Burch, and Riley Backs (Cypress/Cypress Falls) in senior day festivities celebrating their contributions to the program as SCAC Champions.

Senior Joe Burch (Geronimo/Navarro) got the start on Senior Day and pitched five shutout innings, allowing just three hits. He finished with six strikeouts and no walks. Brendan Beard (Coldspring/Coldspring-Oakhurst) closed out the final four innings to earn his third save of the season. He struck five batters and allowed two runs on three hits and a walk.

Texas Lutheran took a 3-0 lead in the fourth powered by back-to-back solo home runs from senior Holden Philippus (San Antonio/San Antonio Christian) and Tyler Post (San Antonio/Johnson) to lead off the inning. Senior Randy Huerta (New Braunfels/New Braunfels) started a two-out rally with a single to center field. Huerta would work his way into scoring position by advancing to second on a wild pitch and stealing third base. Huerta would score after an errant throw back to the pitcher following a walk to senior Asher Bonnell (Round Rock/Stony Point) to give TLU a 3-0 lead.

With the homer, Tyler Post moved into a tie with Aaron Crais (2003-06) for third all-time on the TLU Baseball home run list with 33 in his career and into fourth all-time on the program career RBI list with 161 in his career.

Philippus finished the game 2-for-2 with a solo home run, two runs scored, and three walks and Huerta finished 2-for-4 with an RBI.

Southwestern cut into the lead with a solo home run in the sixth inning.

Texas Lutheran added an insurance run in the bottom of the seventh with an RBI single that scored Philippus to give TLU a 4-1 lead.

The Pirates attempted to rally in the ninth, pushing one run across but Beard was able to work out of the jam to seal the win.

For more information on Texas Lutheran baseball and all TLU athletics, you can find updates on tlubulldogs.com and all official TLU social media channels (@tluathletics and @TLU_Baseball on Twitter, @tlubulldogs on Facebook, and @tlu_athletics on Instagram and TikTok).