TROY, N.Y. - It was a battle of capital region rivals on Saturday afternoon, as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) baseball team took the first game of a doubleheader with the Union College Garnet Chargers by a final score of 5-3 before falling in game two in a closely contested 2-1 final score. 

Game 1

A fifth-inning home run from Martin Marintchev broke a 3-3 tie to give the Engineers a 5-3 win in the opening game of the day.

After Union scored two in the top of the first inning, the Engineers responded back in the bottom of the second. Stephen Koval smacked a three-rin home run down the left field line to score both Kameron Levesque and Matt Chotiner as it gave RPI a 3-2 lead.

A sacrifice fly from Sebastian Pike in the top of the third brought the game back to a 3-3 tie. Throughout the middle innings, the Garnet Chargers threatened to score but could not get runners across the plate. In all, Union stranded 14 runners on the game.

Marintchev's two-run home run in the bottom of the fifth broke the tie, as he finished the fame with a game-high three hits. Cameron Heuer pitched 3.2 innings of shutout ball before handing the ball to Cooper Hay to close out game one as Hay collected his second save of the season.

Game 2

The second game of the day was a scoreless battle through four innings of play as Alex Vallee and Jack Collins kept things scoreless with just one combined hit between the two. As the fifth rolled in, an error to open up the inning came back to bite the Engineers as a two-out single from Pike with the bases loaded scored one run before Vallee got a flyout to center to end the inning.

With Union leading 1-0, Collins continued his strong performance on the mound, not allowing his first hit until a Koval single in the bottom of the fifth. That was the only hit he allowed until the bottom of the seventh inning.

The second hit Collins gave up came in the bottom of the seventh, as pinch-hitter Anthony Brigante launched a solo home run over the right center field fence for RPI to tie the game at 1-1.

Union came up with yet another two-out RBI in the top of the eighth inning, as a single from Ryan Cowles with runners on first and second on a weak bouncing ball through the right side of the infield scored one to give the Garnet Chargers a 2-1 lead. 

That score held through the final out in the ninth, despite the Engineers putting the tying run on with a single and stolen base from Levesque before the final out.

RPI returns to action tomorrow, Sunday, April 7 when they head over to Schenectady to take on Union for the third and rubber match of the weekend series.