Friday, April 5th, 2013
St. Henry pitching shuts out St. Marys
By Mark Ruschau
ST. HENRY - The St. Henry Redskins got a sterling effort from a trio of pitchers and just enough offense to defeat the St. Marys Roughriders 3-0 on Thursday afternoon at the Wally Post Athletic Complex.
Redskins' starting pitcher Ryan Mikesell and relievers freshman Mitchell Stammen and senior Alex Post combined to limit the Roughriders to just four hits. Although the trio was able to post the shutout, the defense came up with big plays to help them work out of a few tough spots.
"Our pitching was the key tonight," said St. Henry coach John Dorner. "We feel like we have eight young pitchers that give us a chance to win every night and tonight we showed that.
"I wanted to get these three work tonight and those three were strong," continued Dorner. "Ryan struggled early and he worked behind in the count and I know that he will get better. The freshman Mitchell Stammen came in and pitched well."
Mikesell had to work out of an opening inning jam as he gave up a lead-off double to Tristan Becker and back-to-back walks to Austin James and Issac Fitzgerald to load the bases with no outs. Miksell than bowed his back as he retired Tyler Rose, Zack Wilker and Mason Gross on strikeouts.
Mikesell also got help from his teammates defensively as catcher Briar Hollomon threw out a runner trying to steal in the second and third innings. In the fourth frame, Gross led off with a single and Alex Knous then laid down a bunt that was fielded by third baseman Devon Froning, who fired to first base for the out. Gross saw that third base was left vacant and tried to sprint to third but first baseman Jason Jacobs alertly fired the ball back to a sprinting Froning who applied the tag on Gross to complete the double play.
Stammen came on to pitch in the fifth inning and issued a one-out walk to Becker and then balked him to second base. Stammen got out of the inning by inducing James to fly out to left and getting Fitzgerald to bounce out back to the mound.
"We have a lot of work to do," said St. Marys coach Dave Huber. "Give them credit, they played a nice ball game. We had our chance today but we just did not come through.
"We did a couple of things in the field today that we normally don't do and they were compounded by the fact that we did not score any runs," continued Huber. "We are not going to be a team that scores a lot of runs, so we have to play sound defense and not give up extra outs.
St. Henry got all the offense it needed by scoring a run in the bottom of the first inning. Derek Rindler led off with a base hit but was forced out on Brian Kremer's groundball. Kremer then stole second before Andrew Lundwall was hit by pitch. Lundwall was then forced out at second base by a Froning groundball, but Kremer advanced to third base before Jeff Paul and Mikesell each coaxed walks to force in Kremer with the run.
The Redskins added an insurance run in the second as Hollomon singled and went to second on an error before scoring on a two-out RBI single by Lundwall.
St. Marys returns to action tonight playing host to Coldwater while the Redskins will host the Wapakoneta Redskins and the Lima Central Catholic T-Birds in a round robin on Saturday with the action beginning at 11 a.m.
