It was a tale of two games for Washington pitching last night, but the end result stayed the same in a doubleheader baseball loss at Southeast Conference foe Fairfield. 

As heard on KCII, game one saw the Demons administer 10 free passes to the Trojans (8-7, 4-3) and a couple blow up innings led to a 9-1 defeat. Four walks and a hit batter allowed for a six run Trojan second and that was all they needed with Nate Smithburg in control defensively. He struck out 10 Demon batters and allowed only five hits with the lone Washington RBI coming from Ethan Zieglowsky on a double. Four Demon pitchers saw time with Ajay Six having the best luck surrendering just one run in his first two innings of work on the season. 

The nightcap was a more contested battle with Isaac Vetter and Tate Allen going back and forth in a pitcher’s duel. Both offenses scratched across a run in the first and middle innings with the score deadlocked at 2-2 in the seventh. The Demons went down in order, but Fairfield put some traffic on the base paths with runners on first and second with one away. A wild pitch allowed the runners to take off and the throw down to third bounced into left field that resulted in the winning run coming home to score in a 3-2 final. Vetter did all he could tossing 6 1/3 innings before reaching the pitch count limit and the junior allowed just two runs on six hits. The Washington bats had five knocks with Lucas Kroll bringing in both runs on a sacrifice fly and a run scoring double that tied the game in the sixth. 

Washington Head Coach TJ Rausch tells KCII Sports Vetter was terrific. “Isaac threw an absolute gem. He is a straight faced kid that doesn’t show a lot of emotions in the ups and downs. He just goes out there and throw strikes and tonight he was great.”

The Demons drop to 2-8 overall and 1-7 in the SEC. They dip out of conference tonight hosting West Branch for a single game at 7:30 p.m. that can be heard on FM 106.1 KCII.