Michigan State Baseball wins season-opener against Merrimack

Michigan State baseball began its season on Friday and came from behind to beat Merrimack to improve to 1-0.

For yet another season, Michigan State baseball got things started with a win. This has become a pattern for the Spartans under Jake Boss. As manager, Boss is 13-3 in season opening games and 6-1 when opening in South Carolina. He and this team almost always start the season with a win and the continued that because of a big ninth inning on Friday against Merrimack.

Early in this game, Michigan State fell behind 3-1 to Merrimack before a sacrifice fly from Dillon Kark made it a 3-2 game in the fifth. The scoring wasn’t done in the fifth as the team got back-to-back homers from Noah Bright and Jake Dresselhouse. After the home runs from Noah and Jake, Michigan State never gave back the lead as the pitching really settled in.

After five solid innings from Nolan Higgins, the bullpen came in and closed the door.

Heading into the ninth, it was still a 4-3 game but the bats finally came alive again. After an error by Merrimack, Michigan State was able to expand its lead to 6-3 and ended the ninth with back-to-back homers from Sam Busch and Jacob Anderson. When you go into the bottom of the ninth with a 10-3 lead, you feel pretty good about winning that game and that is exactly what happened.

This was the type of game that this baseball team won a lot last year. Last year’s hitting was the strength of this team and while it was just one game, it looks like hitting and power might be pretty good again. In baseball, you have to do more than just hitting but if this team can be about as good as they were last year and have some of their younger pitchers continue to take a step forward, this could be a fun team to watch like they were in Friday’s game.