The Stetson baseball team did not have the kind of opening night that it had hoped for, dropping their 2016 season debut to visiting Delaware 6-1 Friday night at Melching Field.

The Hatters will try to even the three-game weekend series with the Blue Hens on Saturday when the teams meet in game two. That game is scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. start.

Besides the six-run sixth inning the Blue Hens put together, the Hatters never managed to produce anything offensively in the game. The two Delaware pitchers combined to record 12 strikeouts while holding Stetson to just four hits.

“You can't put yourself in a hole by swinging at pitches out of the zone,” Hatters head coach Pete Dunn said. “If we had a young team, a young offense, then you write it off to inexperience, but that is a veteran team out there. You would hope that they would understand that you have to stay with what you know is successful. We went out of our approach tonight.”

Early on, Stetson ace Mitchell Jordan (0-1) had his way with the young Delaware lineup. He struck out four of the first six Blue Hens looking and worked around a two-out base runner in each of the first two innings. Through five innings, those were the only two Blue Hens to reach base as Jordan piled up seven strikeouts.

“I thought Jordan gave us a quality start,” Dunn said. “He hit the wall and we made an error behind him on a routine play that opened the flood gates. That started the bad inning.”

Delaware starting pitcher Ron Marinaccio (1-0) was almost equal to Jordan through the first five innings, but the Hatters had chances to get on the board in each of the first two frames. Vance Vizcaino led off the game with a hit for Stetson, but was left stranded at second, and John Fussell opened the second with a hit, but was erased on a fielder's choice play.

It was Fussell who finally broke through for the Hatters, blasting a two-out solo home run in the fourth inning. For Stetson, that was the last offensive highlight of the night. The Hatters managed just three base runners the rest of the way, two on errors and one on a walk.

“Our bat discipline was horrible,” Dunn said. “We were swinging at balls out of the zone. It just goes to show that you can't get comfortable about what you do in practice. We got out there in a game and did the opposite of what we have been doing. It was disappointing to me early that we had runners at second base with no outs and couldn't move them up. You have to do the little things to win at this level, and we didn't do anything.”

The sixth inning proved to be the Hatters' undoing, leading to a fourth consecutive opening day loss. Freshman Kyle Baker opened the inning by reaching on an error. After a sacrifice moved him into scoring position, Jordan surrendered a walk to Nick Tierno before Jordan Glover launched a double just over the head of Vizcaino in center to score two runs.

The damage didn't end there. Junior Tyler Keller came in and surrendered a two-out walk before senior Josh Thorne was touched for three straight hits, producing four more runs.

Marinaccio allowed just the one run on four hits over six innings with eight strikeouts to get the win for the Blue Hens. Sophomore reliever Colman Vila earned the save with three shutout innings of relief, recording four strikeouts of his own.

“Mitchell hit the wall in the sixth, but there were numerous factors for why we lost that game,” Dunn said. “We had 12 punch outs, seven of them in our first four hitters. You aren't going to win any games striking out 12 times.

“From a bullpen standpoint, we have to come in a get some outs, and we didn't we went from down 2-1 to down five.”

The Hatters will turn to sophomore Brooks Wilson on Saturday to get the first win of the season. He will be opposed by Delaware freshman left-hander Brandon Walter.