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Nevada narrowly nips Blue Jays, 8-6
After every baseball game, win or lose, the Nevada High School coaches take their players into the outfield to discuss what they liked, what they didn’t like, and all the notable moments that occurred throughout the contest.
Thursday’s 8-6 win over Marshfield surely gave the coaching staff plenty of material — in all three categories — to hash out in the left-field grass of Lyons Stadium.
“They want to win so bad, I think, sometimes that just forces them to get a little tight,” said head coach Danny Penn, whose team endured several quirky plays, faced an opposing pitcher with a funky delivery, and staved off a timely comeback by the Blue Jays to improve to 11-2 on the season. “I thought we did a really nice job getting to the seventh inning. And then in the seventh inning, just kind of got tight again. That’s something we’re going to have to work through. Having the mentality of, ‘I hope they don’t hit it to me because I don’t want to make a mistake,’ and instead having the mentality, ‘I hope they do hit it to me because I want to make the final out.’”
The fourth inning proved to be the difference in this one.
After Nevada opened the scoring in the bottom of the first on a ground-out by Logan Marquardt that drove in fellow junior Eli Cheaney (who’d led off with an infield single), Marshfield (7-4) tied it up in the top of the third thanks to an RBI triple by Jackson Vestal (more on him later).
In the home half of the fourth frame, Marquardt, sophomore Cade Beshore, and senior Drake Seaver all drew walks to load the bases and force Blue Jays head coach William Pate to replace starter Landon Wilson with Ethan Grace. But the walk party carried on.
Nevada junior Kartman Highley and freshman Drake Ketterman drew back-to-back base-on-balls to score two, then Cheaney reached on an error to plate another — before sophomore slugger Case Sanderson ripped a two-run single to right.
Cheaney eventually scored on a Blake Pryor sacrifice fly, and Sanderson crossed home on a base hit by Elijah Nadurata.
“Did a nice job in the fourth inning of taking advantage of wildness on their part,” said Penn, whose team had built up a seven-run lead with three innings to go. “Grinded through some at-bats. Did a nice job of not taking called third strikes today, fouling pitches off, and taking walks when they were there.”
Vestal put an end to Nevada’s run-scoring fun after that, though, taking over pitching duties for Marshfield in the fifth. Thanks to a deceptive delivery with leg kicks of varying speeds, not to mention a few nasty pitches in his arsenal, Vestal was able to affect the Tigers’ timing enough to strike out five of the seven batters he faced.
“That was the first time a lot of our guys have seen that. For the most part, it looked like we weren’t jumping at it too much. But obviously he had good velocity and was down in the strike zone,” Penn said. “He was tough.”
Meanwhile, Cheaney, who had been used exclusively as a reliever so far this season, got the start for NHS and struck out five on four hits in 4 1/3 innings of work — before handing the ball to Seaver, who struck out the first two batters he faced. Seaver had also made a nice diving play at third base in the fourth that robbed Marshfield’s Jackson Rovig of a hit.
“I don’t want to say he was an MVP, but Drake had a huge day for us, gave us exactly what we needed on the bump. Made a diving play at third base in the field, and then threw two innings of quality baseball for us on the bump against a good offensive team,” said Penn, who pulled Cheaney before he was about to face Marshfield’s leadoff batter for the third time. “We wanted to give them a different look. Drake, with that low release, has a lot of arm-side run. A lot of pitches, they were swinging over the top of because it just diving down under their hands.”
Seaver and the rest of the Tigers looked to be in great shape after getting the first batter of the seventh inning to pop up and then catching the next one stealing second (catcher Beshore to shortstop Cheaney).
But an infield error, a passed ball that Beshore couldn’t find and Seaver wasn’t sure if he should retrieve, a single to right, two walks, a missed tag on a fielder’s choice at third, and a bases-loaded infield single allowed the Blue Jays to pull within two with the go-ahead run at the plate.
“They 100 percent mean well. They want to do everything they can to make those plays. It’s hard to practice those situations. ‘The passed ball’s here. Do I go get it, or does the catcher go get it?’ It’s one of those things, you hope in the heat of the moment they react the right way and are on the same page,” said Penn, who wasn’t on the same page with the umpire on the missed tag call. “I thought he got the tag and I thought the runner was out of the baseline. He said he got him. Umpire, obviously, disagreed. Fortunate it did not come back to bite us, ultimately.”
Pryor, who had come on in relief in the middle of all that action, struck out Kyle Jones to end the game and allow Penn to catch his breath — before using it to try and help his team learn from what just went down.
“When we do see those situations, whether it’s a pitcher like that or it’s the passed ball where the pitcher and catcher don’t know what to do, those are things we definitely communicate post-game in our talk and make sure, ‘Hey, do we remember when this happened? If that happens again, this is how we want to handle that situation,’” he said. “The guys are listening. They’re paying attention, to their credit. So, we hope if that situation does come up again, we handle it the right way.”