Featured photo by Cameron Wimberly
Story by Conner Smith
Murfreesboro, TN- Middle Tennessee baseball played the Evansville Purple Aces on Friday but the Blue Raiders are the ones who got outstanding play from their ace, Jaden Hamm. Hamm propelled his team to a 2-0 win after he hurled the program’s first complete game, one-hit shutout since 1976.
This game didn’t have much offense with only two runs combined, but it was the Blue Raiders who got it going first. In the first inning, JT Mabry extended his hitting streak to seven games when he got on base via a double. Mabry ended up scoring on a Brett Coker sacrifice fly.
Both teams failed to score until MTSU struck again in the sixth when Coker drove in Mabry off a double. That would be the deciding factor in this great pitcher’s duel.
Hamm finished his amazing day with 11 punchouts, one hit allowed, and three walks, in a full nine innings.
“I felt amazing,” Hamm said. “I had a great defense behind me. I trusted my stuff out there. It’s my first time going nine innings, so it’s awesome. It’s one for the books for sure. Everything was working from the beginning. I had a couple of spurts in there where I had to overcome and trust my stuff.
Especially after we put up a couple of runs, my confidence went through the roof. Our defense is awesome, you can’t play the game without them, so hats off to those guys.”
MTSU head coach Jerry Meyers loved what he saw from his team today, breaking the four-game losing streak.
“Hamm was outstanding,” Meyers said. “He set the tone and did more than that. He continued to get better as the game went on. When he had a couple of spurts with some misfires, he immediately got himself back to where he needed to get.”
Conner Smith is a sports report for MTSU Sidelines. If you have information for a story, you can contact him at [email protected].
