NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Junior right-hander Taylor Hill continued his stellar start to the season pitching a shutout into the eighth inning and Curt Casali notched four hits with a homer and two RBI to lead Vanderbilt to a 9-2 win over Illinois State Saturday evening at Hawkins Field.
The Commodores improved to 9-1 on the year, while the Redbirds fell to 4-4.
Hill held the Illinois State offense in check until the eighth and ended up allowing two runs on seven hits with six strikeouts to improve to 3-0 on the year.
“I thought our pitching today was pretty good,” said Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin. “I thought Taylor did a nice job and got stronger after the second inning as far as the command of his fastball and the velocity of it.”
The Commodores were without the services of All-SEC shortstop Brian Harris who missed the game due to sickness. Freshman shortstop Anthony Gomez started in his place and had two hits and a RBI.
VU scored on a run in the second on a sacrifice fly RBI by Riley Reynolds, starting a streak of four straight innings in which the team would score.
Jason Esposito doubled with two outs in the third and scored on Aaron Westlake’s RBI single to center. Esposito ended up with three hits and three stolen bases on the evening. In all the Commodores stole six bases in the game.
Freshman centerfielder Connor Harrell singled to right-center to open the fourth and Reynolds reached on a catcher’s interference on a grounder to short. Joe Loftus struck out, before Gomez came up with a RBI single up the middle to score Harrell. Esposito would later add a RBI single to make it 4-0.
Curt Casali and Andrew Giobbi hit back-to-back homers in the fifth to extend the lead to 6-0. It was Casali’s team leading third homer of the year, while it was Giobbi’s first round-tripper in 2010.
VU added two runs in the seventh on a RBI groundout by Harrell and a RBI single by Joe Loftus. They closed out the scoring in the eighth on Casali’s RBI single to right.
“Offensively we just pecked away, scoring in six of the eight innings,” said Corbin. “We didn’t have any big innings, we pecked away which is just as important. We still have some work to do with our skill type hitting and we will keep working to try and get better.”
The Redbirds got on the board in the eighth on a two-run single by Anthony Ruffolo off Will Clinard who came on in relief with runners on second and third and one out. He struck out Chad Hinshaw for the second out before Ruffolo singled to left-center to break up the shutout bid. Clinard pitched 1.2 innings of one-hit ball, with four strikeouts and a walk.
Giobbi added three hits and Loftus recorded two of his own to help pace the 18 hit attack.
The Commodores will close out the Music City Classic tomorrow against Indiana at 4 p.m. The Hoosiers are also 2-0 in the tourney after shutting out Kent State, 3-0, earlier on Saturday afternoon. VU will send sophomore right-hander Jack Armstrong (1-0, 4.50 ERA) to the mound, while Indiana will counter with sophomore right-hander Evan Wilson (0-0, 0.00 ERA).
