Demorest, Ga. – The Millsaps Majors Baseball Team notched its 10th win of the season on Monday afternoon as they took it to the Methodist Monarchs with a convincing 10-1 win. Sophomore Zander Romano earned his first start of his career and grabbed his second win of the season. Junior Stephen Gates went 3-for-3 while senior Ryan Zemke drove three runs in.
Gates led the game off by being hit by a pitch and advanced to second on a balk. After two outs and a walk, freshman Samuel Doucet hit a RBI double and Zemke drove in two more with a single to make it 3-0 Millsaps after one.
The Majors added two more in the second as senior Andrew Evans led the inning off by reaching on an error. Senior Drew Leonard followed that up with a beautiful bunt to find himself on first with no outs. The two advanced thanks to sacrifice bunt from Gates and Evans scored after the second balk of the game was called on the Monarchs. Roussel drove in Leonard after grounding out and Millsaps went up 5-0.
It was all Romano needed as he struck out six batters in six innings of work and forced eight fly balls or pop ups.
The Majors added two runs in the sixth thanks to a RBI ground out from Evans and a RBI double from Gates and picked up one more in the seventh thanks to a sacrifice fly form Zemke to go up 8-0.
The Monarchs finally got on the board in the bottom half of the seventh, but the Majors added runs in the eighth and ninths thanks to RBIs from Roussel and sophomore Andrew Rafferty to take the 10-1 victory.
While Romano earned the win, junior Will Elmore pitched three innings and only gave up two hits while striking out four. Six Majors put together a multi-hit game, which was led by Gates going 3-for-3 with two doubles while Zemke went 2-for-5 with three RBIs. Leonard added a 3-for-5 day with three runs scored. Roussel, Doucet, and freshman Keith Shumaker all added two hits each.
The Majors are back in action on Wednesday as they return to Twenty Field to take on the Birmingham-Southern Panthers in a non-conference game. First pitch is set for 6 p.m. and live stats will be available on gomajors.com.
