Korbin Koch, who is playing with Northeast Nodaway's senior league team, shut down North Andrew's fledgling baseball team and his new teammates gave him plenty of run support as Northeast shut down the Cardinals 18-3. North Andrew will offer baseball at the high school level for the first time and will be coached by long-time Worth County coach Todd Simmons. Mr. Simmons will also coach girls softball as well. The first challenge will be to field a competitive team; the next will be to find a conference to play in. North Andrew left the Platte Valley Conference for the Grand River Conference effective this year.
North Andrew took a 3-0 lead in the top of the first thanks to a three-run double which took a bad hop and got away from Spencer Gray and rolled all the way to the wall. But Northeast came back to tie it as Ethan Adwell reached safely when the second baseman missed a tag on Brayden Welch and threw away the throw to first. Two runs scored before the Cardinals could corral the ball. Colton Wilmes grounded out to tie the game up at 1.
NEN starting pitcher Ethan Adwell struggled to find the strike zone, walking four batters in 1+ innings of work before running out of pitches. But then Koch came on in relief and overmatched the Cardinal batters. He picked a runner off first; catcher Rowdy West threw another runner out stealing after a walk, and Koch recovered to strike out the next batter on three pitches. Sporting a fastball, breaking ball, and knuckleball, Koch proceeded to tie up the Cardinal batters the rest of the way, fooling them many times and having them back out on breaking stuff and knuckle balls that were in the strike zone.
Rowdy West put Northeast up for good in the second as he doubled off the wall to score Chet Spire and Rory Bredlow. West then turned around and threw another runner out stealing third to stop any damage in the top half of the third. With two outs and the bases loaded, Northeast finally broke the game open as Spencer Weir walked to force in a run. Two run singles from Rowdy West and Brayden Welch followed to put Northeast up 10-3. Colton Wilmes caught a towering fly ball in left in the fourth that took forever to come down, and West threw his third batter out stealing later in the inning. Koch froze another batter with a knuckleball after the batter had just missed extra bases with a line drive that was just foul past third.
The floodgates opened up in the fourth as North Andrew made seven errors; six walks of Bluejay batters didn't help either. Spencer Weir came on in relief in the top of the fifth to strike out the side.
No comments:
Post a Comment