Triton Baseball: Trojans Can’t Hold on Versus Winamac
BOURBON — Baseball is a funny game.
Entire outcomes are sometimes decided by a single pitch, or even the slightest hesitation. And sometimes what at first blush looks like a bad break in the end turns out to be a lucky one.
Actually, the outcome hinged on a little bit of each of those scenarios in Triton’s Hoosier North Athletic Conference contest with visiting Winamac Thursday night. The Trojans held a 3-1 lead for five and a half innings opposite the conference co-leading Warriors, but senior Jack DeGroot gave his team the go-ahead with a three-run shot in the top of the seventh, then turned around and earned the save on the mound as Winamac handed host Triton a heartbreaking 4-3 loss in Bourbon.
“One pitch kills you. That wasn’t necessarily a bad pitch. Hey, he got ahold of it. That’s baseball,” said Triton head coach Tyler Hensley of DeGroot’s homer.
“That guy hasn’t hit a curveball all night. We probably threw 12 curveballs at him. He’s a good player. He’s hitting good this year, I know that.”
If the ball had bounced a little differently in the preceding at-bat, DeGroot may never have gotten the chance to supply his late-game heroics.
With runners on first and second and none out, Doug Mullens’ would-be sacrifice bunt became a fielder’s choice ball when Triton pitcher Zac Pitney snagged it off the hop and turned and fired to third to get lead runner Will Planck out. Had Mullens’ bunt had the desired effect, the Trojans may have opted to intentionally walk DeGroot, who is batting better than .600 this season, theorized Winamac head coach Don Howe.
Instead, DeGroot lofted Pitney’s 0-1 offering straight out to center for the eventual game-winning runs.
“He’s been our hitter all year. He’s hitting over .600. I shouldn’t say I’m glad that the guy got thrown out at third, but because he got thrown out at third they didn’t walk him and they had to pitch to him. I didn’t think the ball was going to go out, but it was huge,” Howe explained. “And then to come back in, I know he was nervous and excited and everything was high, but he did a great job.”
Winamac’s ace, Howe was initially holding DeGroot back for a doubleheader with HNAC co-leader LaVille Saturday. But after his three-run shot put the Warriors in the driver’s seat, Howe marched him out to replace starter Carson Despot in the bottom of the seventh. DeGroot surrendered two straight walks to Keygan Mosier and Lucas Newman with one out but dialed in to fan both Connor Pitney and pinch hitter Ryan Snyder and end the threat.
All told, the Trojans left 12 runners stranded in Thursday’s loss.
“We left way too many on. I’ll bet we left 10, 11, 12 guys on,” said Hensley. “I don’t know how many, but you can’t leave those guys on. The score should’ve been different.
“We had a lot of chances to win the game.”
In fact, Triton probably should’ve entered the decisive seventh leading by three runs instead of two.
Nate Flenar led off the bottom of the sixth with a single through the gap at short, stole second and reached third on a Max Slusser fly to right. But Flenar hesitated when Winamac first baseman Ricky Stoll bobbled Dylan Hensley’s blooper in the no-man’s land between first and the mound in the next at bat — although Stoll ultimately recovered to gun down Hensley on the play — and he never got another opportunity to score as Despot induced a flyout from Adam Stevens to end the inning.
“The first baseman was coming in; he just hesitated,” said Tyler Hensley of the play. “I was saying ‘Go, go, go, go’, but they’re kids so they don’t always think. You’ve got to score on that one, though. Tie game, we’re still going, playing right now. That’s alright. It’s something we’ve got to work on.”
The Trojans skipper was nothing but confident in his starter’s ability to work his way out out of a jam in the seventh, and Pitney had already demonstrated that ability early in Thursday’s contest.
The Triton defense got off to a shaky start in the game, and the Warriors capitalized on three first-inning errors with a run to take an initial 1-0 lead and load the bags in the opening frame. But an unflappable Pitney got Sam Griffeth to ground out to Dylan Hensley at short, Winamac left three stranded, and the home team trailed by just one run headed into the bottom half of the inning.
Once there, the Trojans weren’t as forgiving, making the most of four walks, a hit batsman and an RBI single by Pitney to plate three runs and take a 3-1 advantage that they would hold until DeGroot’s big hit in the seventh.
“We were lucky. The kid that pitched for them threw offspeed and kept us popping it up and hitting little ground balls all night. One lucky break, and we take it from them,” Howe said. “It’s heartbreaking I know, but it’s exciting for us. It’s our fifth come-from-behind in the seventh inning this year, which is exciting.”
Winamac improves to 11-1 in the HNAC to stay even with one-loss LaVille and 14-6 overall on the season with Thursday’s win.
Triton slips to 11-5 overall with an 8-3 Hoosier North mark with five conference games remaining on the schedule before the start of the state tournament May 24. The Trojans will have a one-day layover before resuming HNAC play in a doubleheader at Pioneer Saturday. After that it’s on to North Judson on Monday, then a home game with Culver Community next Thursday.
“We still want to go out and win the last five. And I know we can,” said Tyler Hensley. “A rough night tonight. That’s how baseball is. You win some, you lose some. It was a good game overall.”