Marshalltown baseball didn’t have the offensive firepower to match Mason City in an Iowa Alliance doubleheader sweep for the Riverhawks at Marshalltown High School on Thursday.
Mason City won Game 1, 6-2, and claimed the second game, 13-2, in five innings. The Bobcats are now 2-21 overall and return to action against Des Moines North/Hoover at home on Wednesday, June 19.
Riverhawk pitching limited the Bobcats to four total hits, including a single hit in the nightcap.
“We have to be willing to at least attack the fastball,” MHS head coach Colton Hanke. “If we’re hesitant, tentative and slow, then we’re going to continue getting blown up by the fastball.
The Bobcats had a puncher’s chance in the first game — down 2-0 in the second, JJ Schoenfelder and Garrett Thede reached on Riverhawk errors and Caleb Kusserow brought them home with a two-RBI double to tie the game.
The MHS defense turned away Mason City multiple times for the remainder of the game; in the fifth Dale Greene reeled in a catch in center and fired it to Thede to double up a runner on second in an inning where Mason City would go on to leave the bases loaded. The Riverhawks loaded the bases again in the sixth, but Thede, Luke Stalzer and Zander Stupp turned an inning-ending double play to prevent a run from crossing.
Unfortunately for the Bobcats, the third time loading the bases was the charm for Mason City in the seventh inning — Owen Rickers blooped a single into left field to score Max Lang and Brayden Miller smacked a double to score three more.
“We were carrying through [defensively] all six innings, but that last inning balls were getting hit and we couldn’t keep from minimizing the extra bases,” Hanke said. “We just need to try to knock it down and get it cut so they can’t get that extra base that turns a single into a double and a triple. We have to work on getting the ball in quicker and keeping it in front of us.”
Kusserow led off the seventh with a walk but the Riverhawks got a turnabout double play of their own on the next at-bat, followed by a strikeout to end the game.
Game 1 starter Sam Greazel allowed five earned runs on 12 hits with three walks and no strikeouts, working all seven innings for the Bobcats.
“For what he threw, he gave us a really good chance,” Hanke said. “They started to hit him up a bit in the seventh inning but I was very pleased with Greazel’s effort, he gave us a very good opportunity to win tonight.”
Game 2 dipped back into what Hanke said was a familiar trend of big innings unraveling and putting the Bobcats on their heels early.
MHS limited the damage to just three runs in the first inning, including Kusserow tagging out a Riverhawk at the plate, but Mason City pounded out six hits for seven runs in the second frame, including a solo home run for Evan Miller, as 11 Riverhawks went to the plate total.
“We felt like we were still in it after stopping it at three runs in the first, but then it just happened again and again,” Hanke said. “It’s a general trend of what it has been this year … and we just can’t afford that.”
An errant pickoff throw scored Tayven Dutton from second in the first inning and Sam Greazel laced an RBI single in the third for Marshalltown’s two runs in the late game.
After a string of losses in the last two days, Marshalltown has a valuable five-day stretch away from competition until returning to the field for another back-to-back twinbill at home with North/Hoover and then Ames on Thursday, June 20.
Hanke expects to be hitting on some defensive fundamentals with his young, inexperienced squad in the meantime.
“We need to just stay on the guys about getting things down on the defensive side,” Hanke said, “grounders, fly balls especially and work on some relay stuff here.”
