LaPORTE – As many know the morning after can be rough and it was all that for Plymouth’s Pilgrims as they followed a sparkling Friday night performance with a much sloppier one in falling to LaPorte by a final of 9-7.
Both teams ran the gamut of great to not so great, in a game with 11 walks, eight hit by pitch, and each making three errors.
The Slicers jumped to a commanding three run lead off Plymouth starter Joe Barron but then Barron righted the ship to throw two more shut out innings. On the LaPorte side Lee Timmons went into the fourth inning with a no hitter only to exit the game in the fourth before he could record the third out trailing 5-3.
Timmons own two out throwing error, followed by a two run double by Benji Nixon to put the Pilgrims ahead would chase him from the game giving way to reliever Mark Haines.
Plymouth would return the favor as Will Malekovic’s three run homer off the first pitch of reliever Jacob Deacon would give the Slicers back a lead they would not relinquish.
“We had too many free bases,” said Plymouth coach Ryan Wolfe. “They capitalized on a few more of the ones that we gave them. Wild pitches passed balls, hit by pitches couple errors you can’t do that. They gave us some opportunities and we took advantage of them too, but you can’t get away with that when you play a good team.”
It was a big change for Plymouth who had played remarkably error free baseball through a cold and sporadic opening few weeks to the season.
“We’ve played pretty error free ball,” said Wolfe. “Hopefully we get it out of our system and get on to next week.”
Plymouth fought back in the seventh piecing together some hits to plate two in a comeback attempt but the Slicers would hold on to take the win.
“We got a lot of guys out there today that was kind of what we were after,” said Wolfe who saw his entire roster get a chance to contribute on Saturday. “It’s disappointing because we had a chance to win it. We hit some balls hard. Gave ourselves an opportunity at the end with the tying run at the plate.”
The Pilgrims now face a week that has six straight games starting at home on Monday against Goshen and ending on Saturday with South Central at Bill Nixon Field.
Plymouth is now 4-3 on the season.
•LaPORTE 9, PLYMOUTH 7
at LaPorte
Plymouth 0 0 0 5 0 0 2 7-7-3
LaPorte 3 0 0 3 3 0 x 9-8-3
WP – Haines. LP – Deacon. HR – Malekovic. 2B – Nixon (P), Dolan (P), Silfa (L).
