MHS baseball battles, falls to Railsplitters
Marshalltown baseball is finding more defensive consistency, but the few miscues made on Wednesday added up quickly as Des Moines Lincoln swept the Bobcats in an Alliance doubleheader at Marshalltown High School.
The Railsplitters won the opener, 8-3, and claimed the nightcap by a 6-1 margin.
“We limited ourselves to only a couple errors tonight, and even that’s too many,” MHS head coach Colton Hanke said. “But it’s better than when we were making five, six errors and having it take a big toll on everybody.”
MHS gave up five runs in the first inning of game one, and the Bobcats were able to get three back in the bottom half of the first — Dale Greene scored on a Lincoln error, Tayven Dutton came home on a double steal with Caleb Kusserow, who later came home on a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch taken by Luke Stalzer.
“We put ourselves in a big hole, but we were able to play through it,” Hanke said.
Offensively, the Bobcats coaxed eight walks out of Lincoln starter Aaron Guerrero but left five on base and often put a lot into play that went right to a Railsplitter defender.
Marshalltown eighth-grader Garrett Thede was solid in relief of starter Sam Greazel, throwing six innings and scattering six hits with two walks and three runs allowed.
“He gets them off-balance out there, throws strikes,” Hanke said of Thede. “He came in in a tough spot and was just trying to get some momentum for us. We needed to pick him up on the offensive side.”
Lincoln drew first blood in game two in the second inning on back-to-back run-scoring hits from the bottom of the Rails’ order, but a running catch from Dale Greene in center limited the damage by leaving two Lincoln runners in scoring position.
Dutton provided an answer for the Bobcats with an RBI single in the third to score Bennett Ricken pinch-running for Thede. But MHS had a couple baserunning miscues that kept them from getting an equalizer.
“We were threatening with our bunts, getting a couple of chances to catch them off-balance,” Hanke said. “But it comes down to running the bases and we had a couple of big mistakes in the wrong spots that killed innings for us.”
Lincoln scored two runs in the fifth inning and added single tallies in the sixth and seventh inning. Zander Stupp went 5 1/3 innings with five strikeouts and three earned runs on 10 hits.
“He left a couple pitches up that they got a hold of,” Hanke said. “Overall he was good, but to take it to the next level he has to be able to continue throughout the game — if those pitches aren’t up there and they send them to the wall it might be a different game.”
Marshalltown (1-9) wraps up the week on the road against Ballard on Friday.
“We just have to limit the errors, continue to fight through and be consistent defensively,” Hanke said.
