Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 JACKSONVILLE, IL – With two more wins over Illinois College on Sunday, Grinnell Baseball completed the series sweep and helped clinched a spot in the Midwest Conference Tournament.  Game One went the way of a 6-3 final while John Essig '16 threw a complete game shutout in Game Two for a 4-0 win. 
 
Game One
 
Seniors Anthony Mack '16 and Graham Fisher '16 led the way offensively with three hits each and they kicked it off in the first inning when Mack bunted for a base hit and moved to third on some situational offense before Fisher tripled him home.  Matt Hammond '17 then doubled, staking the Pioneers to a 2-0 lead. 
 
Mack hit a one-run single in the second with the bases loaded and Sam Galanek '18 knocked in Ravi Levens '19 with a sacrifice fly.
 
With a 4-0 lead, Fisher, who was also the starting pitcher, went to work on the Blueboy hitters.  Despite going only six innings, Fisher racked up 10 strikeouts and while issuing a single walk.  He faced some trouble in the fourth, a solo homerun, and the fifth, two runs on three hits.  But after the offense added two runs, thanks in part to a Fisher run scoring single in the bottom of the sixth, Sam Lopez '18 came out of the bullpen with a 6-3 lead. 
 
The final three innings were handled by Lopez and Ben Binversie '17 and were relatively uneventful as the pair allowed one hit and struck out three in the three innings of combined work.
 
Game Two
 
Often in a four game series the final contest becomes a slugfest, but Essig made sure that wasn't the case.  The senior struck out 11 Blueboys without issuing a walk and delivered the complete game shutout on 119 pitches. 
 
Pacing the way for an offense that compiled double digit hits in all four games in the series, Matt Hammond '17 and Matt Godinsky '16 both had two hits and drove in a run.  Godinsky's RBI came on a mammoth solo homerun in the ninth inning for the final blow of the series.  Before the long ball came runs via the bunt, as the Pioneers used small ball for the first three runs of the game, one each in the third, fifth, and ninth before Godinsky's moonshot. 
 
Essig on watching the Illinois College hitters up close for three games before starting the fourth game of a series, "Through the first three games, I saw that there were some holes in their bats and that they weren't hitting with power for the most part and as long as I kept the ball down they wouldn't be able to do much consistently."
 
For the most part, the senior right-hander was able to minimize damage with two pitches, "Pretty early on I noticed they were taking my curveball or swinging through it and I was able to get ahead with my fastball and then went to the curveball later.  For strikes, I was working with the two-seam, but if I got to two strikes and didn't like the curveball we went to the four-seam fastball and threw it as hard as I could."
 
Essig on clinching a spot in the senior class's fourth MWC Tourney, "It's pretty amazing to start 12-0 and it's great to make the tournament again but I don't think that the team will be happy until we take it to Cornell." 
 
Illinois College falls to 13-14 overall and 1-7 in the MWC. 
 
Grinnell has now won 14 straight and 20 of their last 21 games to extend their record to 26-4 and 12-0 in the MWC. 
 
The Pioneers' next games are scheduled to be Thursday, May 5 at Cornell College.