Fast start propels Cardington past Northmor

By ROB HAMILTON -

North­mor couldn’t recover from a slow start in los­ing 4–3 to Cardington’s base­ball team Wednesday.

The Pirates took advan­tage of three early errors by the Knights to plate four runs over the open­ing two innings. While North­mor ral­lied in the final two frames, they fell one run short of their opponents.

“The kids were really pumped up to be here today,” said Pirate coach Char­lie Miller after his team improved to 3–2 in league play and 4–7 over­all. “This is one of those games you have to win if you want to be there in the conference.”

For the Knights, it was their first league loss, but they still lead the Blue at 3–1 in Mid-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence play and are 8–3 over­all. Head coach Buck Work­man felt that his team strug­gled with impa­tience at the plate against start­ing pitcher Zach Lothes.

“We were swing­ing at too many bad 3–1 and 2–0 pitches,” he said. “We were over-aggressive at the plate. I think part of the rea­son we came back was because we went back to what made us successful.”

In the first inning, the Pirates took a 3–0 lead. Daron Lan­don led off with a walk, took sec­ond on an errant pick­off attempt and then scored on a mis­played ground ball hit by K.C. Brown. Then, with two on and two out, Andy Dever cracked a dou­ble that wound up scor­ing two runs after the throw home sailed past catcher Ron­nie Thomas.

Card­ing­ton added a fourth run in the sec­ond inning when Chase Deck­ling drove in Alex Taha.

“We had two big errors in the first inning and in the sec­ond inning, we mis­played a fly ball, so essen­tially, all their runs were unearned,” said Work­man. “We just put our­selves in too big a hole.”

Both Lothes and North­mor pitcher Zach Wise­man dom­i­nated the next few innings on the mound before the Knights started a come­back bid in the sixth.

“He threw strikes and kept their run­ners off the bases,” said Miller of Lothes, who only allowed one total baserun­ner in the third, fourth and fifth innings.

With the bases loaded in the sixth after a dou­ble by Wise­man, sin­gle by Thomas and walk to Zach Fout, Josh Corns drove in one run with a ground­out before Lothes got out of the inning.

Then, in the sev­enth, a lead­off sin­gle by Char­lie Burggraf caused Miller to replace Lothes on the mound with Brown.

The Knight loaded the bases and scored runs on an error on a ground ball hit by Bran­don Tay­lor and a one-out sin­gle by Thomas. How­ever, Brown would then retire the next two bat­ters to pre­serve the win for Cardington.

“They’re a good team and well-coached,” said Miller of North­mor. “After the sec­ond inning, they shut us down offen­sively. Hats off to their pitcher.”

Lothes and Brown com­bined to strike out four and walk two. Dever’s dou­ble was Cardington’s only extra-base hit.

For North­mor, Wise­man fin­ished with five strike­outs and two walks. Thomas had two hits for the team, while the pitcher attempted to help his cause with a double.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.