SYRACUSE – The tough luck continues for Plymouth’s Pilgrims as a very rocky first inning led to another loss at Wawasee High School by a final of 8-2.
A combination of errors and walks led to seven first inning runs, only two of them earned in a disastrous inning that was the story of the game. The Pilgrims made four errors and starter Jesus Luva walked two and hit a batter as the long bus ride to Syracuse seemed to hang over for the first inning.
“We didn’t get off the bus, Chuy wasn’t ready to go,” said Plymouth head coach Ryan Wolfe, “We weren’t ready to go and I’ll take credit for that. We had four errors in the inning, two walks and two hits. You aren’t going to win any games doing that spotting them seven runs.”
Plays that would normally result in outs resulted in base runners for Wawasee in an inning that seemed would never end.
“When you press a little bit you try to do too much,” said Wolfe. “Those are plays that tomorrow we’ll probably make every time. When you’re pressing it’s hard to take a step back and get through some things. We have to find a way. We have to play tomorrow.”
Luva recovered to go three more innings surrendering just one more.
Meanwhile Plymouth “won” the rest of the game with two runs. Nate Nixon had a two-run single in the second inning, but that’s the only offense the Pilgrims could muster. Nate Nixon ended the night with two hits, Benji Nixon had his second multi-hit night in a row and Ezra Winkle had a pair of singles.
“We played decent baseball the rest of the way,” said Wolfe. “We had some decent swings, hit the ball hard sometimes but you aren’t going to win many games giving up seven in the first.”
Three Wawasee pitchers were able to shut the Pilgrims out for five innings, leaving the bases loaded in the seventh.
“You just got to keep fighting. We keep talking about the same thing but we gotta find a way,” said Wolfe. “Nobody’s going to feel sorry for us and say we haven’t won in a couple of weeks, we’ll give you one. We have to keep grinding.
“We may change some things up. We’re going to practice tomorrow before we go to Clay. We’re going to take some ground balls. We’re going to work on bunts and first and thirds who knows maybe this time of year that will win us a game.”
A tough two-week string got tougher with no relief in sight as the Pilgrims have a game on the road at South Bend Clay, and Monday unbeaten NorthWood comes to Bill Nixon Field.
“We just have to make a few plays and get some confidence back,” said Wolfe. “Baseball is a game where you can’t hide. You know the ball is going to find you. The minute you start thinking you don’t want the ball hit to you or start questioning something it’s going to get hit to you. That’s baseball.”
Plymouth is 10-11 on the year.
Wawasee 8 Plymouth 2
At Syracuse
Plymouth 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2-6-4
Wawasee 7 0 0 1 0 0 x 8-4-0
WP – Caden Wegener. LP – Jesus Luva.
