CLAREMONT, Calif. — The University of La Verne baseball team went 15-for-32 at the plate to rout Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 20-4, at Arce Field on Friday afternoon.
La Verne moves to 5-3 on the season while remaining undefeated in SCIAC play at 4-0. CMS falls to 0-10 and 0-4.
Matt Caselli led the way for the Leopards with a 4-for-5 performance. Nolan Henley, Zach Quinones and Ben White each added two hits and combined for eight RBI.
Javi Iniguez (2-1) struck out eight in five innings to pick up his second win of the season.
The Leopards broke it open early. Caselli and White came up with two straight two-out hits in the first to get La Verne on the board first and La Verne exploded for five runs in the second. The Leopards took advantage of three walks and two hit batters by the Stags' starter MacKenzie Menthen to get out to a 6-0 lead. Only one run was scored on a hit in the second inning.
Menthen turned in a 1-2-3 third inning and the Stags put together their four runs in the middle innings, but they couldn't keep the Leopards quiet for long.
Henley plated a run with a two-out single in the fourth and the Leopards successfully executed a double-steal in the following at-bat to add another.
La Verne added three runs each in the fifth and the sixth to go up 14-6, and put any doubt away with a six-run seventh inning. Jakob Thomas led off the inning with his first homerun as a Leopard and La Verne promptly loaded the bases with two hit batsmen and a walk. Then Mark Abbate worked another walk to score Henley, Jared Hovsepian singled in Mark Jebbia and Matt Caselli sacrificed in Andrew Douglas. The Leopards added two more on a throwing error by the shortstop.
David McKeller finished the game off with two clean innings.
Menthen (0-3) was tagged with the loss after giving up 10 runs in four innings.
La Verne is averaging an incredible 10.9 runs per game and has scored a total of 62 runs in the first four SCIAC games of the season.
The Leopards will look to stay hot when they host the Stags for a doubleheader tomorrow. First game starts at 11 a.m.
Follow La Verne Athletics on Twitter @ULVAthletics Follow La Verne Athletics on Instagram @ULVAthleticsLike La Verne Athletics on Facebook Sign up for our newsletter