Second time's a charm for FMU's Broderick

Francis Marion’s Matt Broderick knows full well the game he pitched Wednesday against Mount Olive wasn’t nearly as important as the previous one he threw against the Trojans at the end of last season.

He also knows the Trojans, while still a solid team, aren’t the powerhouse they were at the time.

But don’t be fooled into thinking his performance in the No. 12 Patriots’ 4-1 win over the No. 20 Trojans wasn’t utterly satisfying for him.

It was, and it was pretty easy to tell by the big smile on his face after he allowed just four hits over seven innings to pick up his first victory of the season.

“Today felt great just to get a little redemption on them, just to show them who I am and let my defense work behind me,” the senior left-hander said. “It just went our way today.”

Broderick (1-0) makes no bones about who he is: He’s a soft-throwing left-hander. He tries to move the ball in and out, change speeds as much as he can and keep hitters off-balance. He did all that Wednesday, throwing 50 of his 75 pitches for strikes.

He did that, too, in the Patriots’ final game of the season a year ago, when he limited the Trojans (5-4) to two unearned runs in the Southeast Regional final. But the Patriot bats never got going in that game against Mount Olive fireballer Carter Capps, who was a third-round pick of the Seattle Mariners in last June’s draft, and FMU lost 2-1.

Both Mount Olive runs scored in the third inning of that regional game after Broderick was charged with an error when the umpire ruled he missed first base while covering on a grounder to first.

So, yeah, Wednesday’s game meant something.

“We’re really happy for Matt today,” FMU coach Art Inabinet said. “He got an opportunity to pitch against those guys, and he pitched just as good today as he did last season in the regional. Today we got him enough runs to win.”

Broderick did make one mistake that caught up with him when Daniel Oliver drilled a badly-located changeup to left field for a solo home run to tie the game at 1 in the fifth inning.

But unlike the regional game, Broderick’s offense came through.

Jarrod Reed’s RBI single up the middle in the bottom of the sixth off reliever Josh Frederick (0-1) broke the tie. Then with one on in the seventh, Luke Tollison drilled reliever Ryan Poplin’s second pitch over the left-field fence to make it 4-1.

It was the first long ball FMU hit on its home field this season and just their third of the year. Will Chandler hit the first two in FMU’s Peach Belt Conference series win at Columbus State over the weekend.

The Patriots have now won four of their last five.

“I wouldn’t say that we’ve turned the corner, but we’ve snuck up to the edge of it and we’re beginning to peek around it,” Inabinet said. “We are playing better baseball than we were at the beginning of the season.”

Things are just the opposite for the Trojans, who were ranked No. 1 by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper a couple of weeks ago. But Mount Olive has lost three in a row and four of its last five. Two Trojan errors Wednesday led to two unearned runs.

“We’ve just got to go through some growing pains and these guys have to understand that this isn’t the team we had last year and it isn’t the (national championship) team we had in ‘08,” Mount Olive coach Carl Lancaster said. “We’ve got to scrap and fight to win, and we just don’t do a good job of it.”

Senior right-hander Jarrott Hooks, a Marion native, threw two scoreless innings to get the save, allowing one hit.

Francis Marion travels to Montevallo Saturday and Sunday for a three-game PBC series. Saturday’s doubleheader and Sunday’s single game are scheduled for 2 p.m. starts.

Francis Marion 4, Mount Olive 1

Mount Olive 000 010 000 — 1 5 2

Francis Marion 001 001 20x — 4 9 0

Skyler Sopotnick, Josh Frederick (5), Ryan Poplin (7), Matt Dillon (8) and Geno Escalante; Matt Broderick, Jarrott Hooks (8) and Jacob Golliday. W – Broderick, 1-0. L – Frederick, 0-1. Sv – Hooks (2). HR – Mount Olive, Daniel Oliver (1); Francis Marion, Luke Tollison (1).