Simon Kenton’s baseball team created the chances, just couldn’t find the timely hit on Thursday at Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Baseball State Tournament presented by UK HealthCare.
The Pioneers (27-14) left nine men on base and issued seven walks and hit four batters in a 4-1 loss to Russell County (31-10) at Legends Field in Lexington.
Mayes Gosser’s two-run homerun in the first was enough offense for the Lakers to prevail, the ball just clearing the left centerfield wall that was originally ruled a triple, but umpires convened and ruled it a homerun.
“Third base umpire said it hit the sign behind the fence,” Pioneers coach Troy Roberts said. “I’m not sure, I thought it hit the green (the wall), changes the complexion of the game if that’s not a homerun. But I’m not a coach that will ever blame the umpires, our team will never do that, we know we had our chances today.”
The Pioneers lone run of the game came in the second inning, three straight hits with two outs scored Bailey Rump on Caleb Uhl’s single. They chased Lakers starter Austin Bartrug in the third inning, but Owen Loy came in and pitched 4.2 innings of one-hit baseball and struck out four.
“Loy had a lot more command,” Roberts said. “We were sitting on fastballs with Bartrug because he didn’t have as much command. That obviously helps the hitters when you’re sitting on one pitch. Loy came in and threw a lot of pitches for strikes. He came in and pitched good. We didn’t expect to see him, but he threw well.”
Simon Kenton failed to capitalize on run-scoring opportunities from there. They had left nine runners on base through five innings of play, two left on the paths in each inning from the second through the fifth.
“We just didn’t get our timely hit that we’d been doing,” Roberts said.
After the two-out rally in the second, the next best opportunities came in the third and fifth innings, the third coming with runners on the corners and one out, the fifth with runners on first and second and one out. A strikeout and a groundout followed in the third, a strikeout and flyout in the fifth.
The Lakers capitalized on the Pioneers walks in the fifth. After a hit batter, Logan Cones third of the game and two more walks followed, Russell County suddenly had the bases juiced with one out without putting a ball in play.
Cones walks were uncharacteristic of his season, issuing five in 4.1 innings with three hit batters.
“Logan gave us everything he had,” Roberts said. “I thought he came out and pitched well, I know he had a few more walks than he typically does, but I still feel like he gave us a chance.”
Caleb Uhl came on in relief and after a walk and sacrifice fly RBI from Tanner Stringer, Russell County took a 4-1 lead into the sixth. The Pioneers were retired in order in the sixth and seventh innings from there.
The Pioneers outhit the Lakers 6-3 and didn’t commit an error. Six strikeouts and the 11 free passes without a Russell County player having to make contact came back to haunt them.
“If you would have told me we would outhit them, we’d be playing on Saturday,” Roberts said. “They made some good pitches in key spots, had a few of our guys guessing which we normally don’t do.”
The loss puts an end to the Pioneers season at 27-14, graduating 10 seniors from this year’s team.
“We knew we had a good group coming in. We coached them hard, played some blue collar baseball and took it all in,” Roberts said. “Special group, we’ll miss these seniors a ton.”
Simon Kenton was making their first trip to the state tournament since 2017, finishing runner-up that year.
“Takes a little bit of luck to get here,” Roberts said. “Ball has to bounce your way and you have to play fundamental, solid baseball. Winning a region championship is hard, winning a state championship is harder. You’ve got 16 really good teams down here.”
Russell County moves on to face Trinity in the quarterfinals on Saturday at 10 a.m.
LAKERS 4, PIONEERS 1
RUSSELL COUNTY — 200-020-x — 4-3-1
SIMON KENTON — 010-000-0 — 2-6-0
2B — (RC) McGowan
HR — (RC) Gosser
WP — Bartrug. LP — Cones.
Records: Simon Kenton 27-14, Russell County 31-10
