Martin County West came away from the Howard Schmidtke Wood Bat Tournament with a pair of losses, but the Mavericks came away feeling pretty good about how they’re coming along with the start of the Section 2A tournament coming up a week from Thursday.
The Mavericks lost to host St. James Area (13-4) 10-0 to open the tournament Friday night and then fell to United South Central (8-9) 6-3 on a sunny and warm Saturday afternoon at Veteran’s Field in St. James. In the final game of the tournament SJA edged USC 8-7.
On Friday, two St. James pitchers combined to hold MCW without a hit in the five-inning, run-rule shortened game.
Talyn Tande pitched four innings for the Saints, walking four and striking out two. Max Westman walked one and fanned one in his inning.
Noah Meixell went four innings and took the loss for the Mavericks, with Cam Meyer finishing up. The two combined to allow five hits and walk four.
“We had a really tough matchup against St. James,” said Martin County West coach Jon Traetow following the Saturday game vs. USC. “St. James is a really good ballclub. They put the ball in play and hit it hard.”
Six MCW errors led to only four of SJA’s 10 runs being earned.
“We had to challenge ourselves,” said Traetow. “We came out with a little different lineup to have a shakeup in our defensive alignment, but we just came up a little short.”
The Rebels scored first in the bottom of the second, with the Mavericks pulling even at 1-1 in the top of the fourth when Cam Meyer made it to second on an error and scored on Maddex Faber’s single.
USC scored four in the bottom of the fourth, but the Mavericks got two of those runs back in the top of the fifth, Lucas Larson’s single scored Michael McCorkell and a Meyer single brought in Brock Jagodzinske, who had singled earlier.
“I was really, really happy to see our guys not fold over there,” Traetow commented. “Time and again we’ve had that inning that we haven’t been able to get out of. They did have a four-spot in the fourth, but we did have guys step up and make a play and kept damage to a minimum.
“We just couldn’t come with that one big hit that could have brought us all the way back.”
Three MCW pitchers combined to allow six hits, walk seven and strike out six.
“At the start of the week we told the guys that we had a lot of games, especially at the end of the week with the tournament,” Traetow commented. “You could definitely tell that the pitchers did not have their ‘A’ stuff, but our ace, Lucas did a phenomenal job of working through it even without his ‘A’ stuff. My other senior, Brenan (Ringell) came in and took care of that inning, cleaning it up. That’s big time for him to step up.
“And then I’m fortunate to have a freshman like Colsan Andersen, who can come in and clean up my seniors’ mess after that. We did a phenomenal job on the mound of getting out of trouble. We just have to a better job of preventing it to begin with.”
At the plate, Larson had three hits and stole a base. McCorkell had two hits.
After two days off to rest their arms a little, the Mavericks have a 5:30 p.m. doubleheader vs. Mankato Loyola at ISG Field in Mankato. The teams had an earlier scheduled game in Welcome postponed.
MCW closes its regular-season schedule at home Friday vs. Windom.
