Cardinals top 'Cats

MINSTER - The New Bremen ACME team had an offensive explosion in Monday's win over Russia.

The Cardinals saved some offense for Tuesday, too.

New Bremen scored five runs in the fourth inning, added another in the fifth and held on to defeat Minster 6-4 at Melcher Street Park, locking up the No. 1 seed in the Auglaize-Shelby sectional tournament.

"We talked about (the No. 1 seed) after last night," said New Bremen skipper Brad Selby, whose team scored 31 runs against Russia. "We knew we could get it with a win tonight.

"We've been hitting the ball well," he added. "We've got 56 hits over the last four games."

New Bremen and Minster each collected nine hits on Tuesday. Early on, the Wildcats struggled to get anything going against Cardinal ace Spencer Alig, who allowed just four hits while pitching four scoreless innings.

Alig fanned seven Minster batters and walked none before being forced to exit the game in the fifth after hurting his hamstring while running to second on a double.

"Alig's solid," his coach said. "He's a workhorse. Even during spring he led us in innings pitched, wins and strikeouts. He's just a gamer. He's not honorable mention All-Ohio for nothing."

Minster pitcher Ethan Lehmkuhl cruised through three innings, striking out four New Bremen hitters while walking none. The Cardinals failed to score in the second inning after Patrick Wells led off with a double.

But Wells put New Bremen on the scoreboard first with an RBI double in the third inning, which scored Mitchell Hays after he reached on an error. Lehmkuhl followed by hitting Alig with a pitch and then balked twice to send home Wells. Alig later scored on a wild pitch. Lehmkuhl was pulled after allowing two more free passes and an RBI single to Zach Bertke. Hays padded the lead to 5-0 with a run-scoring hit off of reliever Logan Tumbusch.

"It was a lot of just mental errors," Minster coach Jay Eilerman said of the fourth. "(Lehmkuhl) had a couple of balks - that's just stuff you've got to clean up. You can't have that happen."

After Alig's one-out double in the fifth, his pinch runner, Logan Opperman, scored on a groundout by Ben Blickle.

Hays replaced Alig on the mound and gave up four runs to Minster in the home fifth. Adam Ketner and Justin Nixon hit RBI singles with Gabe Philipps smacking a two-run double to the left-center gap.

But Hays rebounded to hold Minster scoreless over the sixth and seventh.

"We were a little off today," Eilerman said. "Alig was hitting his spots pretty good. I thought we were going to get them when he came out. We started hitting the ball a little bit better in the middle. … But we just didn't have it at the beginning."

Bertke, Hays and Wells all had two hits for New Bremen. Ketner and Nixon each had two hits for Minster.

The Auglaize-Shelby sectional begins Friday in Minster. New Bremen-Russia begins at 6 p.m. and Minster-Fort Loramie will follow at roughly 8 p.m. The winners return for a noon matchup on Saturday.

"It was our goal to get that one seed," Selby said. "But we'll see (Minster) again in tournament. Everybody knows that. Hopefully we both advance out of (sectional) and we see each other again down the road."