Baseball wins at Leopold

On Thursday, the Oran High School fall baseball team played their final road game of the season.  They started slow but picked up a 7-1 win over the Leopold Wildcats to improve to 14-0 with one game remaining.

The Eagles scored first.  Layne Johnson and Todd Priggel walked to start the game.  Then, with one out, Clay Sauceda laced a double down the opposite way to drive both in.  Oran would get only one more hit the next three innings.  At one point they had five in a row go down swinging.

Meanwhile, Leopold cut the deficit in half in the second inning.  They used a single, a stolen base and an error to plate an unearned run off Eagle starter Johnson.  Johnson only went two innings, in what was basically a live bullpen session, to help stay sharp for Saturday's game (and that's a story for another post).  Oran had five errors for the day, that was the only one that proved costly.

The Eagles picked up a run in the fifth.  Johnson reached on an one-out error, stole second, went to third on a passed ball and crossed the plate on Drew Reischman's single.

Oran would blow it open with four in the seventh.

A double by Reischman, a passed ball and a single by Sauceda drove in the first.  A Denver Elfrink double put runners on second and third..  Ty Johnson's single drove both in.  Then with one out, Johnson who was on third at the time, crossed on Peyton McVay's single.

Reischman pitched five innings and was awarded the win.  He gave up only one hit while striking out seven.  At the plate he was 3 for 4. He had an RBI and a run scored.   Johnson tossed two and allowed only two hits and fanned three.

Sauceda was 2-3 with 3 rbi.  Ty Johnson had a hit and two rbi.  McVay had 2 hits including a double and one driven in.

Coach Joe Bickings said, "I felt we had way too many errors and gave Leopold plenty of opportunities to score but we were able to limit the damage and only allow them to score one run.  I also felt like we didn’t take care of our opportunities that Leopold gave us early on but was able to capitalize on an error they made to start the seventh inning that turned into 4 insurance runs for us.  We need to make sure that we limit our mistakes and do a better job of taking advantage of the ones that teams give us."

He also commented on the pitching, "I thought Drew looked sharp on the mound and only giving up 1 hit with 7 strikeouts.  What I did like was that we didn’t walk anyone on the day between Layne and Drew throwing."