UNIVERSITY PARK – Six State College Spikes pitchers combined to whiff 13 Williamsport Crosscutters on Thursday night as the Spikes drew within a half-game of the first-place Crosscutters with a 5-2 win at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park.

With eight games remaining on the MLB Draft League first-half schedule, the Spikes (11-10) are tied for third with the West Virginia Black Bears. The Crosscutters (12-10) remained in first place despite the loss, but now lead the Trenton Thunder (13-11) by only three percentage points.

Another stout mound effort powered the Spikes, beginning with the debuting Jacob Mayers. The LSU product, fresh off winning a national championship in Omaha and notching the win in the MLB Draft League’s 10-6 win over the Cape Cod League in Monday’s exhibition at Citi Field in New York, allowed just one run on four hits and one walk while striking out seven batters over four innings.

Caden Wooster (1-0) then struck out two batters and yielded just one walk and one hit batsman over two scoreless frames before Landon O’Donnell and Ethan Storm kept the Crosscutters off the board in the seventh. Jason Shockley then left the bases loaded with two strikeouts in the eighth before Treyson Peters (1) whiffed one batter in a one-hit ninth for the save.

Ryan Rivera got the offense going for State College with a two-run single in the first. Despite continuing his eight-game hitting streak, the longest active string in the MLB Draft League, Rivera saw his streak of multi-hit games finish at five after a 1-for-3 performance. The multi-hit streak finished one game shy of the Spikes record shared by Steven Ramos in 2013 and Trent Taylor in 2022.

Dan Tauken and Caden Shapiro added RBI singles for State College.

Williamsport starter Connor Knox (1-1) took the loss after giving up two runs on seven hits while recording five strikeouts.