Photo by Sam Thiel Marshall’s Seth Radtke throws to first during their game against Benson on Thursday. Marshall defeated Benson 10-4.
MARSHALL — After splitting four games at the Upper Midwest Classic tournament last weekend, the Marshall Legion baseball team came back home to square off against Benson. But when Benson took a 4-0 lead in its first trip to the plate, Marshall knew it needed to dig deep.
The Mudcats did just that, not allowing another Benson run while plating 10 runs of their own en route to a 10-4 victory on Thursday at Legion Field.
Marshall coach Mitchell Maxwell said they made mistakes early that were uncharacteristic of their group and credited his team for weathering the storm and battling back.
“We just did some things that were really uncharacteristic of this group. We pride ourselves on pitching and defense and I thought early we made some mistakes that we don’t usually make,” Maxwell said. “To their credit, we had a great response by the guys and had some really good clutch hitting.”
Benson jumped out to a quick start, using a single, an error and a walk to load the bases with no outs before another error brought in a run. They then capitalized on another error, a wild pitch and an RBI groundout to plate three more runs and take an early 4-0 lead.
Marshall would have an answer, though, with Chase Douglas reaching on an error and Tyler Maeyaert drawing a walk before AJ Toulouse connected on a two-run triple to make it 4-2 after one. The Mudcats weren’t done there, as Jake Eben and Mitchell Bouwman reached before Maeyaert got aboard on an infield single to plate a run. One batter later, Connor Neubeck smacked a two-run triple of his own, giving Marshall the lead for good at 5-4.
After a scoreless third, Marshall kept up its offense over the next couple of innings. In the fourth, Bouwman led things off with a single before Douglas connected on an RBI single. Then in the fifth, the Mudcats got a leadoff walk from Jacob Hughes before Toulouse brought in a run on an RBI single to make it 7-4. Marshall wasn’t done there, however, loading the bases on a Zach Allen single and a Seth Radtke walk before Douglas lined a double that cleared the bases and brought it to the ultimate 10-4 final.
Douglas led Marshall with three hits and four RBI while Toulouse added two hits and three RBI, Bouwman had two hits and Allen, Neubeck and Maeyaert each had a hit and combined for three RBI.
Maxwell said their key on offense was the spark provided by the bottom half of their lineup.
“The bottom of the lineup did a really nice job,” Maxwell said. “When you look at the two big innings, they were both started in the bottom half of the lineup, so I thought they did a nice job of doing some little things to get things going and set the table for the top of our lineup to come back and score some runs.”
Bouwman earned the victory on the mound, going seven innings while allowing four runs on three hits and struck out five. Maxwell said he felt Bouwman did a good job of making the right adjustments as the game went on and got back to his mechanics to keep Benson off-balance.
“I thought early his pace wasn’t there and there wasn’t a good downward plane on his fastball, so it was flat and they were kind of hitting it a little bit but he did a good job of going back to some of his mechanics and staying tall,” Maxwell said. “His pace then picked up with that and so did the downward plane on his fastball, and the second and third time around the order he was able to mix up his pitches and keep them off-balance.”
Up next
Marshall (7-4) will face Watertown (S.D.) on Tuesday at home at 6 p.m. Maxwell said he was pleased to see the role players take advantage of their opportunity on the field as well as their ability to respond from adversity.
“We had some guys who had an opportunity to get in the lineup that don’t normally get that opportunity and I thought they did a nice job, so that makes you feel good about times in the future when those guys need to be in the lineup,” Maxwell said. “And then just that reaction to adversity and battling back; we put ourselves in a hole and gave them a four-run lead, they didn’t really earn that four-run lead, we gave it to them and we responded, so that was huge.”
"four" - Google News
July 09, 2021 at 12:32PM
https://ift.tt/3hPqu5n
LEGION BASEBALL: Marshall rallies from four-run deficit to take down Benson, 10-4 - Marshall Independent
"four" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2ZSDCx7
https://ift.tt/3fdGID3
No comments:
Post a Comment