DUNLAP – It took a freshman to put a ray of sunshine in another grey cold baseball day as Plymouth’s Pilgrims held onto a 10-3 win over NLC foe Concord in a big road win for Plymouth.
Plymouth got a big lift from left handed freshman starter Matt Dobuck as he picks up his first win in a varsity game in his first varsity start, going four shut out innings striking out six and giving up just a pair of hits. He then traded spots with first baseman Noah Pesak and saved two Pilgrim throwing errors with some slick glove work around the bag.
“He’s a kid that’s fearless,” said Wolfe. “We talked to him last night and told him he was going to pitch today and he didn’t bat an eyelash. He just went out there and did his business. We were hoping that we could get four from him tonight, if we could stretch him to five great. He did exactly what we asked of him, and he made a couple of great plays around the bag.”
Noah Pesak and Jacob Deacon came on and finished but not without Concord putting on pressure to the end.
With rescheduled games piling up and the Pilgrim pitching staff dealing with injury to key components, Dobuck’s hot start on the JV brought the opportunity to get a look on the varsity and the young lefty did not disappoint.
Meanwhile the Pilgrims were using another new weapon in their offensive arsenal – an aggressive approach to the basepaths.
“We were able to do some things on the bases and put ourselves in scoring position,” said Wolfe. “We didn’t hit a whole lot of balls hard but when you put yourself in scoring position you’re going to push runs across.”
The Pilgrims scored their first run of the game when Benji Nixon led off the game with a single up the middle, promptly stole second and third, and trotted home on a passed ball. Nixon had three of the Pilgrims five stolen bases in the game added a leg double and scored from first on a bloop single by Cole Filson in the sixth.
I think that aggressive approach – taking extra bases, moving first to third – was really the difference in the game,” said Wolfe. “Hustling out of the box – Benji (Nixon) had that little blooper that turned into a double – we got ourselves to second and third base and scored on those little base hits. We put guys in motion, when you’re putting pressure on the defense like we can you can score a lot of runs in a lot of different ways.”
It was a workmanlike win for the Pilgrims who move to 3-1 in the NLC and 5-4 overall with another road conference game Wednesday at Wawasee, and home games Thursday against Logansport and Friday against NLC rival NorthWood.
“We couldn’t put guys across to put them away,” said Wolfe of Concord’s tenacity. “We had some guys in scoring position to do that but that’s the kind of team they are. They aren’t going to quit.”
•PLYMOUTH 10, CONCORD 3
at Concord
Plymouth 1 3 0 2 3 0 1 10-10-3
Concord 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3-9-3
WP – Dobuck (1-0). LP – Mendoza. 2B – Luva (P), Nixon (P), Pesak (P), Kronemeyer (C), Sotebeer (C), McDougal (C).
