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Eagle, Cougar baseball teams split two
ROACHDALE-- Conference play resumed Monday night for the North Putnam Cougars baseball team and the South Putnam Eagles. The first night of a back-to-back was held at North Putnam with the Cougars edging out the Eagles 4-3 in nine innings of work. At South Putnam the Eagles took the big win 8-2.
"They're learning how to start and finish games," Cougar coach Brian Jeter said of his team. "I would say the biggest part for us tonight was that we turned three double plays. They weren't traditional, but we turned three double plays and those were inning killers."
"It was a tough loss," Eagle coach Zack Love said. "I am proud of the effort. We hit the ball really hard tonight."
North Putnam's baseball field was a pitcher's park with the wind blowing out of the northwest and in. The pitchers combined for 16 total strikeouts and any pop flies gave their defense a chance to make a play.
"We threw our ace and they threw theirs," Jeter said. "We knew it was going to be a low scoring game. It kind of came down to that. Tomorrow's game is going to be interesting. We've been hoping for this to happen. We've been wanting for our defense to get better."
"It was a really well played game all the way around," Love said. "I thought North Putnam came out and played well and so did we. We pitched well. Our pitchers gave up only two earned runs tonight I think. Gierke came up with a big hit and drove in a couple of RBIs, Trevor Long had a couple of big hits and Jake Schroer has been hitting the ball hard. It's just one of those games that didn't go our way tonight."
Both teams got on the board early in the game. Each team pushed a run over and the Cougars left two men on base.
The Cougars possessed their first lead in the third inning when pitcher Bobby Scheele singled and then sophomore Jack Kendall reached on an error by the second basemen. Both runners advanced to score after the bases were loaded on a Jacob Berry walk.
Between the second and fifth innings Scheele was dominating the Eagles lineup only allowing one base runner on a walk, but in the sixth inning he allowed a single, a walk and another single to load the bases with no outs.
Brandon Gierke, who was pitching for the Eagles, came up to bat with the luxury of the bases being full. He hit a single that scored both Taylor Bush and Jake Schroer and that tied the game up at three.
"It picks up your confidence when one of those gets through," Love said. "Like I said, I think it's one of those nights where things just weren't getting through and our balls hit in the outfield were being caught. To see one get through with guys on base that was definitely big for our momentum and helped force it to extras."
As said earlier the wind was blowing into deep right field, which meant any ball hit into left or center would be carried back in. That was just the case for Monday. Multiple balls by both teams were hit hard out to center but they carried only midway to the fence because the wind carried them back in.
"We felt like we were going to have to hit line drives," Jeter said. "At North Putnam the wind is blowing it is either blowing out or in. When it blows in it makes it difficult to hit long ones. Anything up in the air was going to be a pop fly tonight. There were some really hard hit balls tonight and without the wind who knows what would have happened."
"We hit the ball really hard tonight," Love said. "Every time though, we'd hit the ball right at them. It's one of those frustrating things, but I'd rather be doing that than striking out. They just didn't fall where we needed them to tonight."
With no runs scored in the seventh inning the game went into extras. The Cougars had a chance to win with the bases stacked in the bottom of the eighth, but with two outs Scheele grounded to third to end the threat.
After a clean ninth inning pitched by Cougar Max Haste, Kendall started off the inning with a single and stole second because of a bad throw. Before the next pitch was thrown, junior pitcher Grady McHugh made an errant throw over the second baseman's head and Kendall went to third.
With no outs and a runner on third junior Jake Berry was at bat. Kendall was pinch run for because he was winded after running the bases. He was substituted for by Trae Straziscar. Berry calmly went to the plate and hit a hard ground ball under the third basemen's glove that sent Straziscar across home plate for the win.
"We called time and went over to talk to him," Jeter said. "If someone ahead of him got on we were going to have him bunt and he was ready for that position. Luckily, South Putnam misplayed a ball and Jack (Kendall) got over to third. He was actually winded so we went with a pinch runner. We decided to let Jake hit."
Love said that his Eagles were ready for a win on Tuesday and the home team showed it in its win.
"We played well in the last couple of games," Love said. "We really bounced back today. We kept hitting the ball and putting the ball in play. We had several guys with multiple hits. We had a heck of a night pitching from Braxston Lucas and Hunter Croan came in and pitched for us."
Coach Jeter felt that in each game errors did the losing team in.
"I felt that the team that made the most errors lost the ball game," Jeter said. "(Monday) night South Putnam made some errors in the field. That's what pushed us over the edge. (Tuesday) we made quite a bit a errors that we hadn't planned for. We had six missed signals from the coaches. So our kids didn't come to play."
Brandon Gierke scored three RBIs including his big homer early in the game.
The Eagles notched their eight runs on 12 hits.
South Putnam next plays at home against Turkey Run while North Putnam will play Saturday at Lebanon.
At North Putnam
South Putnam 100 002 000--3
North Putnam 102 000 001--4
WP: Haste (NP), LP: McHugh (SP)
At South Putnam
North 200 000 0 -- 2 5 3
South 106 010 0 -- 8 12 1
WP: Lucas