RIVERSIDE — In a battle between a pair of talented Greater Catholic League Co-Ed teams, both coaches came away wanted a few more clutch hits.
Badin scored two unearned runs on five hits to claim a 2-1 road win over Carroll.
The Rams’ Josh Hegemann led off the game by reaching on a Carroll error. Four batters later, Hegemann trotted home on Ryan Kirkendall’s deep sacrifice fly to right field to give Badin a 1-0 lead.
Badin’s Kaden Kimbrell got on board with the second of three walks thrown by Carroll pitcher Mitch Applegate in the third inning. Kimbrell then scored on a wild pitch to give the Rams (13-2, 8-1 GCLC South) a 2-0 margin.
Carroll (8-7, 2-4 GCLC North) got on the scoreboard in the fourth when Johnny Adkins scored on Evan Stemmer’s RBI single to left. The Patriots had the bases loaded twice in the inning with one out, but Rams starting pitcher Shawn Osborne struck out the next batter, then watched as Hegemann snared a deep fly ball at the center-field warning track for the final out.
“We’ve left more runners on base in other games this season. We have an unfortunate habit of getting runners on base, but not being able to get them in,” Carroll coach Mike Sheets said. He said there were a couple instances where the coaches had considered a squeeze bunt to try and get a runner in from third but “we just couldn’t get the signal in on time. When you’re down 2-1 and the bases are loaded, you hate to squeeze and take the bat out of a kid’s hand, especially when that could break open the game with a big hit, but if it gets us to a tie ballgame … now I wish we had.
“We were the home team, maybe it goes 3-4 more innings, but maybe we’d have had a shot at getting (the win).”
Badin’s Shawn Osborne limited Carroll batters to three hits in his three innings of work. Carroll starter Mitch Applegate gave up three Rams hits in his five innings of work, walking five and hitting two batters, then Steven Chapman came on in relief in the sixth, got out of a bases loaded jam in the sixth, and kept Badin scoreless over the final two innings.
Carroll stranded nine runners on base, despite nine hits. The tying and potential winning runs were on base as Badin relief pitcher Kenny Couch got the final batter to flyout to center field.
“That was a good high school baseball game, but as a coach I was expecting a little more out of our guys offensively,” Rams coach Brion Treadway said. “So hopefully that kicked the Easter Break rust off, and we’ll be back to hitting the ball the way we’re capable of on Wednesday.”
Wednesday is when the two teams meet again, except this time Carroll heads south to take on the Rams in Hamilton.
“Hopefully, we’ll do a better job of bringing runs home down there,” Sheets said. “I think they’ll probably have an even stronger pitcher for us to face, though, so we’ll have to see how things go. We’ll be ready for another battle.”
The two teams play at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24 in Hamilton’s Joyce Park.
