BOONE, N.C. – App State Baseball got two monster innings from its offense, and some timely defensive plays too, in a 15-4 victory in seven innings over Texas State in the Sun Belt Conference opener at Smith Stadium on Friday night.
App State (9-8, 1-0) broke onto the scoreboard with a five-run second inning in which the team sent 11 men to the plate. The first four batters reached in the inning, highlighted by a two-run double from
Jonathan Xuereb.
Tyler Lichtenberger followed with a sac fly, and later in the inning
Joseph Zamora plated a run on an infield hit and
Kameron Miller drew a bases loaded walk.
The Mountaineer bats continued to heat up across the middle innings. After plating two runs in the third inning via an error and a passed ball, App State delivered a seven-run fourth inning. Miller again began the onslaught with a single, jump-starting a stretch of six consecutive Mountaineers to reach base. After
John Kramer singled and
Tyler Figueroa walked to load the bases, Xuereb uncorked his second double of the ballgame, this time clearing the bases.
Xuereb finished his night with a career-high five RBIs in the ballgame, while Figueroa scored a career-high four runs and matched his career-high of four hits, reaching base all five times he came to the plate.
Following back-to-back RBI triples from Lichtenberger and
Braxton Church, and a sac fly from
Dillon Moquin,
Juan Correa capped the fourth inning surge with an opposite-field solo home run for his league-leading ninth homer of the year.
App State tacked on one more run in the fifth inning on an RBI single from Church to score Figueroa, who reached on a leadoff single.
Caleb Cross (2-0) picked up the win for App State, scattering seven base runners across five innings of work. Despite allowing multiple runners to reach base in four of the five innings, Cross skirted any major trouble, yielding just two runs on the night.
The redshirt-senior minimized damage in the third inning, inducing an inning-ending double play ball with the bases loaded to give up just a single run. Cross also stranded a pair of runners in the first and fifth innings and the Mountaineers held the Bobcats offense to just 2-for-14 with runners on base and 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position for the game.
After giving up a pair of runs in the sixth inning,
Jake Beaty also rolled an inning ending double play ball to keep the Bobcats from putting together a big inning.
Zach Lewis got the final three outs of the contest, finishing the game with a strikeout after the App State defense turned its third double play in seven innings to erase a leadoff single.
The Mountaineers will go for the series win on Saturday with first pitch moved up to 1 p.m. due to forecasted inclement weather.
The 2025 App State Baseball season is presented by Chick-fil-A.
