Griffons stay alive, sweep Slashers

Ralph Pokorny/Daily Mail [Click to enlarge]

For six full innings, Nevada Griffons left-hander Lance Hoge was impeccable, practically unhittable in a 5-4 win.

Hoge had a season-high nine strikeouts and a two-hitter entering the seventh inning against the Joplin Slashers on Tuesday night at Lyons Stadium.

Joplin totaled three hits in the seventh off Hoge, including No. 9 hitter Ryan Lambert's two-run single, chasing Hoge and slashing the Griffons' once-cushy 5-1 lead to 5-3 in the first game of a Jayhawk League baseball doubleheader.

After Robert Knight greeted Nevada closer Greg Robinson with a walk to load the bases, Derek Coleman lofted a single into shallow right-center field, scoring McFarland to make it 5-4 and putting runners at the corners.

Joplin appeared poised for a come-from-behind victory, but Griffons catcher Greg Lagreid had other ideas. He threw out Lambert trying to steal second base for the second out, and then Robinson retired the dangerous Tony Vasquez, out of the University of Southern California, on a fly ball to center to earn the save as the Griffons held on for the one-run win.

"I was a little surprised to see him go," Lagreid said of Lambert trying to steal second. "He was the tying run with one out and a double scores him and they've got two chances.

"I was able to get a pretty good throw off."

The Griffons, behind a gutsy pitching performance from left-hander Scott Limbocker, completed a sweep of the doubleheader, beating the Slashers 12-4 in the nightcap.

The pair of wins keeps Nevada alive in its bid to overtake the El Dorado Broncos for third place in the league standings, which would give it an automatic berth in the upcoming National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita. The Griffons, currently in fourth place in the standings, improved to 24-20 in league play and 31-21 overall, while El Dorado is 25-19, 28-19 entering a home doubleheader tonight against the Liberal (Kan.) BeeJays.

"We've just been talking about one inning at a time, one game at a time," Griffons head coach John Hill III said, "and the end result will take care of itself. I was kind of worried there during the first three innings of the first game. I was thinking, 'Oh boy, let's not fall into this routine again,' but they came back and did a great job for us."

First game

Griffons 5, Slashers 4

Neither Hoge nor Hill considers the latter as strikeout pitcher.

Yet the Kansas State junior was just that in the opener, getting his strikeouts in chunks. He struck out the side in the first and fifth and got out of a third-inning jam by fanning Derek Coleman and Vasquez consecutively after Joplin seized a 1-0 lead and stranded runners in scoring position at second and third.

"Usually, he's not a strikeout pitcher," Hill said. "He induces contact and he induces rollover ground balls pitching with his changeup and pitching backwards. But the first couple innings, he was lights out.

"He just lost a little focus late and got a little tired, too. He was a little worn down and he couldn't quite fight through it. He went out there in the seventh and felt like he didn't have any energy."

Hoge retired the first six batters he faced. B.J. Franklin had Joplin's first hit, a single to left in the third He moved to second, when Brandon McFarland was hit by a pitch. The next batter, Brandon Lambert, was safe on an attempted sacrifice and an error to load the bases.

After Robert Knight flew out to right, Hoge's wild pitch allowed Franklin to score to make it 1-0, with McFarland advancing to third and Lambert to second on the play. But Hoge struck out Coleman and Vasquez swinging to get out of the inning.

"I don't necessarily consider myself a strikeout pitcher," Hoge said. "I mainly just go out there and try to use my changeup and try to get guys to ground out and fly out and what not.

"I started losing focus (in the seventh) and didn't get ahead of some guys. I felt like I was on roll and overall, I felt pretty good on the night."

Nevada's bats came alive in the fourth as it sent 10 batters to the plate and scored four runs for a 4-1 lead. South Dakota State's Nick Adams reached on a one-out error and Washington State's Lagreid followed with a two-run home run over the fence in left-center field, his team-leading seventh home run and his 49th and 50th runs batted in.

"I got jammed a few times early in the game," said Lagreid of flying out to center in his first at-bat, "so I wanted to make sure that I was on top of the fastball, especially with the 2-0 count, and I finally hit one pretty good."

Jimmy Dever followed with a single to left and Anthony Ottrando's second double of the game put runners on second and third. Greg Sillivent singled home Dever, with Ottrando moving to third, and Jake Hoover followed with an RBI single to right-center to make it 4-1.

The Griffons scored the eventual winning run in the fifth. Adams doubled to left center and after Lagreid was retired on a fly ball to right, Dever doubled down the left-field line to make it 5-1.

That set the stage for Joplin's too little, too late seventh.

Second game

Griffons 12, Slashers 4

Nevada left-hander Scott Limbocker ran into early trouble, righted his ship and set sail for his team-leading sixth win in seven decisions this season.

"He just flirts with danger a lot," Hill said of Limbocker, a sophomore from the University of Arkansas and a product of Blue Valley North High School in Overland Park, Kan. "He is competitive and he gets through it.

"If he ever figures out how to attack the strike zone early and induce contact and get outs by contact instead of pitching behind (in the count), he's going to even better," Hill said. "Six-and-one is good, yeah, but the thing is, he can be even better."

Managing to hit only two pitches out of the infield off Limbocker, Joplin went ahead 2-0 in the top of the first. Coleman and Andrew Scavuzzo hit one-out infield singles, and Jim Winslow's walked to fill the bases.

Vasquez followed by lifting a sacrifice fly to center, scoring Coleman with the first run, and Chad Wynn added an RBI single to left for the second run.

"It's definitely frustrating when that happens," Limbocker said, "but you've just got to work through it and not let it carry over and affect you.

"I was getting the ball in on their hands and jamming them. They were just hitting slow rollers all over the place. (Griffons assistant coach Craig Frydendall) told me to speed up a little bit and change my tempo and that helped me get ahead in the count."

Nevada quickly answered in the bottom of the first, tying the game at 2 on Nick Adams' two-run homer over the fence in right field with Ryan Tokarz aboard. Tokarz led off the inning with a walk.

"An 0-2 (count), I was just looking to shorten up and maybe drive something up the middle," Adams said. "(Joplin pitcher Jeremy Joustra) left a changeup up and I got all of it. Pretty towering, I guess."

The Griffons put it on cruise control after scoring three runs in the second, four in the fourth and three in the fifth.

Griffons first baseman Walker Moore doubled to lead off the second and later scored when lead-off hitter Ryan Tokarz hit a two-run triple into the right-field corner. Andy Coffin, who was hit by a pitch, also scored as he reached before Tokarz's at-bat.

Adams' sacrifice fly to center scored Tokarz to make it 5-2.

In the fourth, Lagreid's highlighted the Griffons' four-run outburst with a two-run triple, helping extend their lead to 10-4.

Joplin had scored a pair of runs in the top of the fourth on Andrew Scavuzzo's two-run double.

Limbocker's final ledger included four runs allowed -- two earned -- on seven hits while walking four and striking out two,

Tyler Mattox, out of Arkansas Tech, came on in the seventh in relief of Limbocker. He yielded a single before closing out the Slashers.