FRANKLIN – The Franklin baseball team opened Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC) play on Sunday (Mar. 24) afternoon with two games at John P. McDowell Field against the Rose-Hulman Engineers.
 
The Grizzlies (9-6, 0-2 HCAC) suffered a pair of setbacks, with the Engineers (11-6, 3-1 HCAC) taking both games by scores of 11-5 and 7-4.
 
Game One: Rose-Hulman 11 – Franklin 5
The Engineers plated five runs in the first two innings, aided by four Franklin errors. Andrew Wallace got the Grizzlies on the board in the bottom of the second with a two-run blast, but Franklin would play from behind the entire contest, getting within three runs on two different occasions.
 
Wallace, AJ Sanders and Colby Reed had two hits each for the Grizzlies with Garrett DeHart scoring twice. Matthew Johnson (2-1) got the start and fanned five while surrendering three hits over five innings of work. Aidan Ray worked a career-long four innings to close out the game.
 
Game Two: Rose-Hulman 7 – Franklin 4
Rose got the early jump once again with five runs over the first four innings off Franklin starter Jackson Young. Sean Sullivan got the Grizzlies on the board when he scored on a wild pitch in the fourth and the Grizzlies trimmed the Rose lead down to 6-3 with RBI singles from Adam Taylor and Wallace in the sixth. Dyllan Redmon added an RBI double in the eighth to make it 7-4 and the Grizzlies had the bags full with one out in the inning but couldn't get the clutch hit the team craved all afternoon.
 
Young (1-2) struck out six over four innings of work. Michael Carter tossed a career-high four innings in relief before Will Butts handled the ninth inning.
 
DeHart and Redmon both went 3-for-4 at the plate to lead the offense.
 
Up Next
Franklin aims to bounce back on Monday (Mar. 25), when they head to Ohio for two games with the Defiance Yellow Jackets. First pitch is set for 1:00 p.m.