Butler pitcher Jon Anderson came into his start Tuesday night with just 15 walks in 48 1-3 innings.

By the time the Grove City High graduate and freshman at Slippery Rock University left the hill, he had issued eight base on balls in just 4 2-3 innings.

No matter. The BlueSox still led Slippery Rock 2-1 when he made his exit and cruised to a 6-1 win at Pullman Park.

“Jon obviously didn’t have his best stuff today,” said Butler manager Anthony Rebyanski. “Like I told him earlier in the season, out of the 15 starts, you are going to have five where you are absolutely dominating, five when you have to pitch a little bit and five when you have to figure out how the heck to get the ball over the plate. That might have been one of those last five.”

For the most part this season, Anderson has been dealing out of those first five: dominating.

Slippery Rock, though, wasn’t able to do much with their wealth of baserunners, stranding 11 in the game — 10 in the first six innings.

“It’s definitely frustrating when the majority of the year we’ve been doing a great job when we’ve walked that much and getting timely hitting,” said Slippery Rock manager Brett Neffendorf. “We just didn’t get it done when we had guys on.”

Defense had a lot to do with keeping the Sliders off the scoreboard.

Butler second baseman Dylan Wosonovich made several strong plays in the infield, as did shortstop Ryan Fitzgerald and third baseman Matt Peters.

First baseman Josh Forbes made some key scoops and stretches on long throws, as well.

But perhaps the defensive play of the season was made in center field by Taylor Schmidt in the seventh inning.

Parker Osborne smashed his second double of the game and looked like he was going to score on a single up the middle by Connor McCallum, but Schmidt fielded the ball and gunned down Osborne at the plate with a strong throw that was right on target to catcher Alex Jurich.

“Jurich did a great job of selling like the ball wasn’t coming in, keeping the runner up a little longer to get the tag on him. Great job by Schmidt and Jurich on that specific play.

“Your core needs to be strong, your catcher, shortstop, second baseman and center fielder,” Rebyanski added. “In my opinion, everywhere on this field is a strong point. Our guys have been playing great defense all year.”

Slippery Rock had a chance to chase Anderson early, loading the bases in the first inning, but failed to score when Matt Calhoun stumbled rounding third on a single by Osborne and was tagged out trying to get back to the bag.

The Sliders also drew four consecutive walks against Anderson in the second inning — but didn’t score. That was because Dan Hurlimann was thrown out at second by Jurich after he tried to move up on a pitch in the turf earlier in the frame.

Slippery Rock trailed 2-0 on a sacrifice fly by Forbes and an RBI single by Pat McCarthy when the Sliders finally ended Anderson’s night with an RBI double by Osborne with two outs in the fifth inning.

Anthony Battaglia relieved Anderson and wiggled out of that jam before pitching four more scoreless innings to pick up the win.

Battaglia used a big 12-to-6 curveball to fluster the Slippery Rock hitters.

“He did a great job coming in and saved our bullpen,” Rebyanski said. “He has a very good curveball. He has a tendency to leave it up when he tries to guide it a little too much, but tonight he was just throwing it.”

Butler has now won 17 of its last 20 games at Pullman Park and are 19-6 at home this season.

The BlueSox trail East division-leader West Virginia by five games, but hold a half-game lead over Chillicothe for second place and one of the four playoff spots in the league.

“We’ve played very, very well here,” Rebyanski said. “Our guys like being here in front of this crowd. But I told them we can’t get too ahead of ourselves. We have a 11 games left and we have to let the chips fall where they may.”

Slippery Rock 000 010 000 — 1 9 0

Butler 011 030 10x — 6 11 0

W: Anthony Battaglia 4.1IP (4K, 0BB). L: Tyler Wilson 5IP (5K, 2BB).

Slippery Rock (22-27): Matt Calhoun 1B, Joel Klock 1B, Parker Osborne 1B, 2-2B RBI, Connor McCallum 1B, Dan Hurlimann 1B, Dan Palazzo 1B, Tom Crimi 1B

Butler (28-21): Dylan Wolsonovich 2-1B, Ryan Fitzgerald 2-1B, Matt Peters 1B, Pat McCarthy 1B, Tyler Detmer 1B, Taylor Schmidt 1B, Alex Jurich 2-1B RBI, Josh Forbes 1B RBI

Today: Slippery Rock at Butler