Baseball Completes Sweep of St. Thomas

WEIMAR, Texas -- Texas Lutheran Baseball finished off the sweep of St. Thomas by taking both games of Saturday's doubleheader at Veterans Park in Weimar, Texas, winning game one 8-2 and finishing the sweep with a 9-6 victory.

The Bulldogs clinched the series with an 8-2 win in the first of two games on Saturday.

Tyler Post went 2-for-4 with a double, three RBI, and a run scored, while Aric Vasquez (San Antonio/Brandeis) and Holden Philippus (San Antonio/San Antonio Christian) also drove in runs.

Diego Vinton (Richmond/George Ranch) pitched 5.1 innings and allowed two runs (one earned) on six hits. He finished with a career-high 10 strikeouts and picked up his second win of the season.

After falling behind 1-0 in the second, Texas Lutheran jumped out to a 3-1 lead with three hits in the top of the third. Post started the scoring with a two-RBI double before scoring on an error from the St. Thomas second baseman.

After the Celts cut the lead to 3-2 in the sixth, Texas Lutheran would pull away with a five run ninth inning. Aric Vasquez and Holden Philippus would start the high scoring inning with RBI singles before Tyler Post would drive in Vasquez with a sacrifice fly. Philippus and Holden Kesselring (New Braunfels/New Braunfels) would score on wild pitches to bring the game to its final score of 8-2.

Brendan Beard (Coldspring/Coldspring-Oakhurst) would earn the save, throwing 3.2 shutout innings in relief, striking out six.

The Bulldogs (15-12, 6-3 SCAC) trailed 6-4 going into the seventh inning before scoring four runs over the course of the final three innings to grab the lead.

Hayden Kesselring went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBI. Fellow New Braunfels High School alum Randy Huerta (New Braunfels/New Braunfels) went 1-for-4 with a solo home run while Niko Garcia (Houston/Langham Creek) went 1-for-4 with two RBI. Tyler Post was 0-for-1 with four walks - one walk shy of matching the program record for walks in a single game.

Zach Longshore (Richmond/Ft. Bend Travis) pitched four shutout innings out of the bullpen, striking out five to earn the win. Keene Kreusler (New Braunfels/New Braunfels) got his first start of the season and struck out 11 batters over five innings of work.

Aric Vasquez scored on a St. Thomas wild pitch to give TLU a 1-0 first inning lead, but the Celts responded with a run of their own to tie the game at 1-1.

The Celts would launch a solo homer in the fourth to take a 2-1 lead and that's where the game would stay until a three-run homer from Hayden Kesselring, the first of his college career, to give Texas Lutheran a 4-2 lead.

Four more Celts runs came across in the sixth to give the Celts a 6-4 lead through six innings.

TLU tied the game at six following a two-RBI single from Niko Garcia in the seventh. Randy Huerta would break the tie in the eighth with a solo homer and TLU would extend their lead in the ninth with Mason Goudeau and Holden Philippus scoring on a wild pitch.

The Texas Lutheran Bulldogs will travel to Kerrville, Texas, to continue SCAC play on Thursday against the Schreiner Mountaineers at Bob Henry Field. First pitch is scheduled for 2 PM. All streaming and live stats links will be available on tlubulldogs.com.

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).