Baseball is a game of timing.
When your’s is good, you win. When it’s bad, you lose.
For the Bradford baseball team, it was the latter in Thursday’s 3-2 extra-innings defeat to St. Marys.
In a game where both sides made their fair share of mistakes, the Owls’ missteps came at the wrong time, as a slew of defensive mishaps in the ninth inning proved too costly for Bradford to overcome.
“We made three errors in the ninth inning and it’s tough, because you’ve played a decent baseball game until then,” Bradford coach Andy Carlson said. “It was kind of amazing how they were only up one. We were trying to give it to them, which is a testament to a little bit of growth.”
Peyton Manion got the Owls an early lead in the second inning on the strength of an RBI single that scored Jack Pecora. Manion would eventually come around to score himself on a passed ball.
While they did plate two in the inning, the Owls could have come away with even more, as they ended up leaving the bases loaded. That missed opportunity would prove to be costly later on.
On the other side, Bradford escaped a few close scrapes in the early innings. Despite some close calls, starter Dan Manion was able to strand numerous St. Marys runners in the first, second, and third innings.
“Dan was flirting with disaster,” Carlson said. “He didn’t have his best stuff. But he battled. He gave us everything he had. In the end he gave us a chance to win and that’s all you can ask of a starting pitcher.”
Manion would go five innings, striking out seven and walking three.
The Dutch would eventually find the scoreboard in the fourth inning on an RBI single by Tim Beimel. In the next inning, Brendon Rolley tied things up with an RBI double that found just enough room in the Bradford outfield.
Apart from the two-run second inning, the Owls were unable to solve Beimel, who finished with nine strikeouts and just four hits allowed in six innings of work for St. Marys.
Carlson pointed to these offensive struggles as a common problem for the Owls this season.
“In high school baseball you’re going to make mistakes,” he said. “One thing we haven’t done well enough all year is hit, because you’ve got to hit through some of your mistakes.”
Even when Bradford was getting runners on base, they weren’t able to capitalize.
In the sixth inning, the Owls had runners on first and second but were unable to bring either home. In the very next inning, Bradford’s chance to end the game took a major hit when they got picked off at first base.
As the game moved into extra innings, the Owls’ defense helped keep them alive. With a runner on third, St. Marys attempted a suicide squeeze that was quickly snuffed out by catcher Caleb Nuzzo, who tagged out the runner caught between third and home plate.
That same defense, though, proved to be Bradford’s undoing.
Several throwing errors put runners on base and eventually brought home Jeffrey Wehler as the go-ahead run.
Bradford made a brief comeback attempt when Thomas Guay came up with a pinch-hit single in the bottom of the ninth. But once again, the Owls were unable to string enough hits together to mount a rally.
While he notes that his team is making strides, Carlson acknowledged that there is still plenty of work left to be done with only a few games remaining on the schedule.
“They’re 100 percent correctable,” Carlson said about his team’s miscues. “They didn’t make as many mistakes and they won. We made some mistakes and we lost. That’s sort of what it comes down to.”
At BRADFORD
R H E
St. Marys 000 110 001 3 9 0
Bradford 020 000 000 2 5 5
Tim Beimel (9 SO, 5 BB), Jared Groll (7) (2 SO), and Hayden Tettis, Aaron Piccolo
Dan Manion (7 SO, 3 BB), Peyton Manion (6), and Caleb Nuzzo
