Despite all that went wrong for the Michigan baseball team Wednesday night, Rich Maloney retained one positive bit of information.

The Wolverines remain in the thick of the Big Ten championship race.

That's the good news for the Wolverines after a 13-10 loss to rival Michigan State at Ray Fisher Stadium, the specifics of which will need to be forgotten if they intend to keep their league championship hopes intact.

The formula of poor pitching, one error and two base-running blunders factored into the loss, which leaves Michigan little time to regroup before a critical three-game home series with Northwestern this weekend.

"Hopefully, this bad loss kicks them in the rear and says, 'Hey, we've got to go," Maloney said. "But as bad as it was, the reality is that we're still in first place ... although we didn't look like it tonight."

Michigan (29-18, 10-8 Big Ten) wasted an offensive effort in which the Wolverines scored in each of the first five innings. Coley Crank led Michigan with five RBI, four of which came on a pair of home runs, including a three-run shot that gave U-M an early 8-7 advantage.

But Michigan State broke the game open in a five-run fifth, taking a 12-8 lead the Spartans never relinquished.

The Wolverines remain in a four-way tie for first place. Due to the way the Big Ten schedule sets up, Wednesday night's loss did not count against Michigan in the league standings.

Michigan, which has lost three of its last four games, enters this weekend deadlocked in a a first-place tie with Purdue, Minnesota and Northwestern.

"We just have to put it behind us and go for the Big Ten championship," said Crank, who went 4-for-5 in the loss. "We're going to get (in the locker room) take it off our shoulders and get back to it."

Michigan pitching struggled all night, allowing 13 runs over the first six innings. Kolby Wood took the loss, surrendering four earned runs in 0.2 innings of work, three of which came on Jonathan Roof's three-run double.

The Wolverines got within 12-10 in the fifth following LaMarre's two-run double. But when Crank singled, appearing to score Anthony Toth, LaMarre got caught too far off second base and was picked off before Toth scored.

And instead of trailing by only a run, the Wolverines found themselves dealing with another costly mistake that seemed to be all too common against the Spartans. It's just one of the things Maloney said his team needs to move on from and learn from heading into this weekend's home series with the Wildcats.

"It was a big play, without question, because we were rallying back," Maloney said. "That was big. It was just a bad mistake.

"We've just got to play three solid in all three areas and we've got to get some quality pitching. We've got to play better and we're capable of it, but like I told the guys, we're still in first place."

Jeff Arnold covers sports for AnnArbor.com and can be reached at (734) 623-2554 or by e-mail at jeffarnold@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffreyparnold.