Wausau, WI– It was a rain-soaked night in Wausau, and for the Chinooks, the scoreboard wasn’t much prettier than the weather. The Woodchucks toppled the Chinooks 10-5 in Wausau on Saturday night. The Chinooks fell to 13-18.
Similar to last night’s walk-off win that featured a five-run first inning, Lakeshore’s offense got going early in Wausau. In the top of the second inning, last night’s hero Turner Buis led things off with a double, then Andy Shadid was hit by a pitch and DJ Lee singled to load the bases.
Takahiro. Yamada drew a walk to bring home the first run of the night, his second RBI in two games, then Jim Govern singled four pitches later to bring across two more runs and increase the Lakeshore lead to 3-0.
That’s when the rains came.
With two on and two out in the second inning, the wind started howling as ominous dark clouds in the background finally produced the rain they promised. Both teams rushed to get the tarp on the field, acting as makeshift grounds crews.
The delay ended up being a bit more than 90 minutes, but for the Chinooks, it ended up being a bit more costly than just 90 minutes of twiddling their thumbs and re-warming up.
Due to the length of the dealy, field manager Travis Akre chose to sit Jacob Lindemann instead of returning him to the mound. His replacement, Trevor Smisek, didn’t have his best stuff.
Smisek lasted just 1.2 innings and gave up a devastating 3 earned runs in both the third and four innings to both tie the game up then leave Lakeshore staring up at the same lead they had once held.
It was a rare off night for Smisek, who came into the day with an impressive 2.51 ERA over 14.1 innings pitched and had only given up one earned run over his last 14 starts. The only bad mark on his line was a 0.1 inning outing against Kalamazoo during the first game of the season. A performance that ultimately earned him his only loss of the night.
Tonight, he earned his second loss.
The relief behind him wasn’t much better. James Wright IV allowed two runs over two innings—he had only allowed one earned run all year until tonight—and Alex Stevenson allowed two runs over 2.2 innings.
The offense did what it could, scoring runs in both the fifth and seventh in an attempt to keep up, but ugly 10 runs the woodchucks put on the scoreboard proved to be too much.
Tomorrow, the Chinooks will stay in Wausau for game two of their two-game set in Athletic Park.
Nate Odhal will get the start. First pitch is at 3:05.
The Lakeshore Chinooks are a member of the finest developmental league for elite college baseball players, the Northwoods League. Now in its 25th anniversary season, the Northwoods League is the largest organized baseball league in the world with 20 teams, drawing significantly more fans, in a friendly ballpark experience, than any league of its kind. A valuable training ground for coaches, umpires and front office staff, more than 190 former Northwoods League players have advanced to Major League Baseball, including three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer (WAS), two-time World Series Champions Ben Zobrist (CHC) and Brandon Crawford (SFG) and MLB All-Stars Chris Sale (BOS), Jordan Zimmermann (DET) and Curtis Granderson (TOR). All league games are viewable live via the Northwoods League portal. For more information, visit www.lakeshorechinooks.com or download the new Northwoods League Mobile App on the Apple App Store or on Google Play and set the Chinooks as your favorite team.
