Michigan State and Eastern Michigan faced off in a midweek, in-state battle at McLane Stadium in East Lansing with the Spartans outlasting the Eagles in 10 innings.
The Spartans and Eagles faced off Wednesday in their only battle of the season. Michigan State was coming off a rough weekend against Illinois and hoped to get back on track against the MAC foe.
Michigan State sent Adam Berghorst to the mound, while Eastern Michigan countered with starter Dylan Wolff. There would be a ton of scoring in this contest, as both starting pitchers would not make it out of the third inning.
The Spartans struck first with a Mitch Jebb RBI-single in the bottom of the first inning. The Eagles would be responsible for the next two runs scored in the second and third innings, giving EMU a 2-1 lead after the top-half of the third inning.
In the bottom of the third, Jebb struck again with an RBI-double to knot the score up at two apiece. Spartan slugger, and the Big Ten's leading hitter, Brock Vradenburg would give MSU the lead with a sacrifice fly to score Jebb. Dillon Kark added to the fun in the third inning with a solo shot on a 3-2 count to extend the Spartan lead to 4-2.
The Eagles would not go away quietly, however, as they would plate three runs in the fourth inning, highlighted by Aaron Dolney's two-run home run.
The consistent theme of this contest was for both teams to go back-and-forth almost every inning and the Spartans would keep this up in the bottom-half of the inning, with another Jebb RBI hit. The Spartans would also score a run on a wild pitch to hold a 6-5 lead after four innings.
Michigan State extended the lead in the fifth inning with two runs of its own, to take an 8-5 lead going into the sixth inning.
Blake McRae would then answer for Eastern Michigan with a solo shot in the top-half of the sixth inning to cut the Spartan lead to 8-6.
In the bottom-half of the inning, Jack Frank made sure to keep the back-and-forth theme going with a two-run home run to extend MSU's lead to 10-6 after six innings of play.
In the eighth inning, the Eagles would come all the way back against the Spartan bullpen, scoring four runs to tie the game up at 10, highlighted by a three-run home run by Taylor Hopkins.
Both teams would then go scoreless until the bottom-half of the 10th inning, when the Spartans finally put away Eastern Michigan with a Vradenburg sacrifice fly to score Bryan Broecker to give Michigan State an 11-10 walk-off victory.
Michigan State improved its record to 29-16 overall, while Eastern Michigan dropped to 22-24 on the 2023 season.