MARSHALL — The first pitch to leave Brad Thomas' hand drilled the Fireman's Park backstop on the fly.

"I was thinking it was going to be a very long day," the Marshall right-hander said.

Cardinals coach Matt Kleinheinz had a similar reaction, though for a different reason.

"He usually does that about every first inning at some point. Usually it's a curveball, though, and that was a fastball,'' Kleinheinz said. "I got a little nervous at that point."

The worry was much ado about nothing.

Thomas settled in to toss a two-hitter as Marshall beat Cambridge 4-0 in a Southern Capitol Conference prep baseball game Friday afternoon.

Marshall (7-3 overall, 7-1 Southern Capitol) gained firm control of the conference standings at the season's midpoint.

"That's probably our sharpest game we've played all year," Kleinheinz said.

First baseman Derek Woelffler and right fielder Caleb Schuster collected consecutive RBI singles in the bottom of the first to stake Thomas (4-0) to an early lead.

Third baseman Ryan Fisher's two-out RBI single in third put Marshall ahead 3-0, and by the time Thomas scored the final run on Fisher's suicide squeeze in the fourth, the Blue Jays (6-3, 4-3) had one hit and one walk.

The first hit Thomas allowed was Kevin St. John's line drive that caught the pitcher's non-throwing index finger. He didn't give up another hit until two were away in the seventh.

"I couldn't do any of this without the help of my catcher (Jake Miller) and the defense around me," said Thomas, a junior who struck out six, walked two and hit one.

Each outfielder — Juan Acosta, Brian Weisman and Schuster — came up with fine running grabs, and Fisher snared a slicing two-hopper at third.

"He gets us a lot of ground balls and popups," Fisher said.

Cambridge had runners on second and third with one out in the fourth but came away empty.

The same for the seventh with runners on the corners and two outs.

Blue Jays starter Toby Probst allowed only two walks and a hit batsman over the final four innings, but the lack of run support continued a recent trend.

"We haven't been hitting the ball well. We averaged about eight runs a game until the last three games (and) our bats just fell asleep. I don't know what happened,'' Blue Jays coach Adrian Flores said. "It's tough but he pitched well, threw a lot of strikes."