Madison, WI – July 12, 2009. Battle Creek capitalized on two Madison errors and 10 walks by the Mallard pitching staff to come away with a 6-1 win in front of 6,861 fans in game one of a day/night doubleheader at the “Duck Pond” on Sunday afternoon.
“You really kill yourself with walks in this league,” Manager C.J. Thieleke said. “We didn’t play with much tempo or rhythm and that all starts with pitching. It caught up to us in the end.”
Madison starter Jacob Esch (Georgia Tech) gave up a run while striking out four and walking six in five innings of work.
“Esch threw the ball well,” catcher John Hicks (Virginia) said. “He definitely didn’t have his best stuff today, but threw well with what he had.”
Esch ran into his first bit of trouble in the fourth when he walked the first two batters to lead off the inning. The righty battled through and got Greg Fujii (San Jose City) to pop out and then made an athletic play going away from the first base bag to retire Alan Denman (USC Sumter) by a step on a sacrifice bunt. The next batter, Craig Denman (Mercy Hurst), then popped out to second to end the inning.
Hicks broke the scoreless tie with his second home run of the year in the bottom of the fourth. Unlike his first one, this round tripper was no blast, in fact it was a fly ball to right field that skipped by the second baseman, Doug Otto (Virginia Commonwealth), who went out of his way to get to it before crashing into the wall that juts out down the right field line. There was confusion among the Battle Creek defense whether it was a foul ball and the distraction of Otto’s collision allowed Hicks to come all the way around to score without even a throw to the plate. Otto would stay in the game, but Battle Creek found itself down 1-0.
“I knew it was fair,” Hicks said of his inside the park home run. “I was just hoping it would get down between their three guys. I saw C.J. waving me so I just kept running.”
The Bombers got even in the next half inning when Esch had difficulty finding the strike zone. He gave up a pair of singles and a pair of walks, one which forced in the tying run in the form of Otto. He came back to strike out Parker Barberet (Cypress) and then got Fujii to fly out to left to end the inning, leaving the bases loaded for Battle Creek.
In the seventh inning, the Mallards put runners on second and third courtesy of an error on the Battle Creek shortstop, Fujii, to put Kurtis Muller (Iowa) on to lead off the frame. with two outs, Mark Ginther (Oklahoma State) stepped to the plate with a chance to give the Mallards a lead late in the game, but Battle Creek starter, Josh McElwee (Newberry), got him looking with three straight to end the inning.
The Bombers took advantage of two wild pitches in the eighth inning by reliever Brandon Johnson (Western Carolina). A run scored on each of them, one of which was unearned and charged to Brad Allen (Elgin CC) who allowed just two hits over 2.1 innings. He was the hard-luck loser despite a good showing on the mound.
“He threw great,” Hicks said of Allen’s performance. “He had his stuff working for him today.”
With two outs and the bases loaded for the Bombers the top of the ninth, an error on the shortstop Ginther prolonged the inning and allowed two big insurance runs to score. Denman added one more run for good measure with an RBI single through the left side to make it 6-1 Bombers and that’s how the game would conclude.
After hitting two home runs yesterday, the Mallards failed to hit one in game one of Sunday’s doubleheader.
“We need to understand we’re not going to hit home runs all the time. We need base runners,” Thieleke said.
Timely hitting was another issue in game one. The Mallards managed to finish with the same amount of hits as Battle Creek, eight, but they left 12 runners on base.
Riggins finished the day 3-for-5 at the plate while five other Mallards recorded one hit apiece.
Madison (25-18 overall, 6-3 second half) will head into the tail end of the doubleheader on Sunday night seeking a series split with the Bombers (26-16, 5-4).
“We’ll just have to fast forward ourselves a little bit,” Thieleke said in anticipation of game two. “We’re playing Monday’s game today and they’ve been playing doubleheaders their whole lives. It should be no shock to their systems.”
It’ll be right-hander Jordan Hershiser (USC) for the Mallards versus Matt Talley (The Citadel) for the Bombers in game two which begins at 6:05 p.m. at the “Duck Pond”.
