Saved by the rain?
South Warren baseball coach Chris Gage tends to think so.
In a game that took over five hours to complete thanks to two weather delays, South Warren took down Highlands 6-5 in nine innings in Friday’s Clark’s Pump-n-Shop KHSAA first round state tournament game at Kentucky Proud Park in Lexington.
“Saved by the weather delay might be a good one,” Gage said.
After the game was delayed 52 minutes to start, the Bluebirds jumped on the Spartans, coming into the game thinking they weren’t going to have ace pitcher Mikey Coradini.
Highlands put up three in the first, another in the second when the game was halted in the top of the second with the Bluebirds leading 4-1 with a runner on third and one out.
Nolan Schwalbach, Brooks Hendrix and Adam Forton did the damage in the first two innings, the three leading off the game reaching base and eventually coming around to score.
Schwalbach and Hendrix hit back-to-back doubles in the second for the 4-1 edge, but the skies opened up at that point.
“This team does not need excuses. They’re not the type of kids that make excuses,” Bluebirds coach Brian Benzinger said. “So I’ll make one for them. I really do think the rain delay hurt us. I mean, we had all the momentum in the world and I don’t think they were going to be changing pitchers. I really feel like that if we were able to continue that game straight through, that it’s a different outcome.”
One hour, 41 minutes later, play resumed and on came Coradini.
“We didn’t know what we were going to get because his last couple outings he had not been good,” Gage said.
He entered Friday’s contest with a 9-1 record and 1.32 ERA, but a sore shoulder kept him grounded and out of action, the Spartans coming to the realization he most likely wouldn’t be available.
“The thought process was he was out the last week with a shoulder problem, and he was shut down for the year,” Gage said. “But then he got another opinion, a lot of PT work, and we didn’t know he’d be able to pitch today, but we did keep him on the roster, and then during the weather delay, he said, ‘I can go. I can pitch.’ So he’s our best.”
But entered the southpaw in the top of the second, keeping Hendrix at third with a groundout and strikeout and keeping the game 4-1.
It remained that way until the bottom of the fourth when Jacob Robinson’s hit by pitches started to catch up to him. A fourth hit-by-pitch loaded the bases, a fifth sending the second Spartans runner to cross home plate.
Robinson’s day was done after 3.1 innings, enduring the long weather delay to come back out on the bump.
“Jake battled out there,” Benzinger said. “He got warmed up, had a rain delay, pitched an inning, hit another rain delay, and then there was a decision to make with him. Whenever there’s a long rain delay like that, you kind of trust your kid. He said he wanted to go and he did fine for an inning and he looked really good for maybe two innings and then the wheels fell off a little bit.”
Garrett Wiggins entered and limited the Spartans damage in the bottom of the fourth to just one more run as things tightened to 4-3 headed to the fifth.
South Warren tied things up in the fifth on a Joseph Fentress RBI double, the Spartans adding another in the sixth for their first lead of the game on a Griffin Rardin RBI triple, later called out and ejected on a play at the plate due to malicious contact on Bluebirds catcher Kai Anderson.
Down to their final three outs, Highlands’ best hitter this season and one of the top in the state, Brooks Hendrix took a 3-1 pitch over the left field wall for his first homerun of the game and knotting the game up at five. They finally got to Coradini.
“We never could square him (Coradini) up until Brooks did in the seventh,” Benzinger said.
Both squandered opportunities over the next two innings, the Bluebirds most notable one in which they had runners on first and third with one out in the top of the eighth with Schwalbach and Hendrix due up, but a groundout to third and fly out to right ended the threat. The play before Schwalbach’s at-bat was a Wiggins single up the middle, but caught enough gloves to not get to the outfield, Benzinger opting to keep Finn Bouldin at third.
“I give late stop signs at second or third, and still don’t think he would have made it if we would have kept him going,” Benzinger said. “But that’s neither here nor there. There was only one out, and I feel like with our top two hitters coming up I didn’t want to run us into a second out.”
The Spartans loaded the bases in the bottom of the eighth, but Adam Forton got Ty Croghan to ground out to first to end the frame.
The game was now at Major League innings heading to the ninth and at the five-hour mark. The Bluebirds went down quietly in the top of the ninth, South Warren getting things going quickly on Jaxen Decker’s leadoff double. Decker eventually scored the game-winning run on a sacrifice fly from Gray Pearson, just deep enough to score Decker and send them to Sunday’s quarterfinals to face McCracken County, a 3-1 winner over Lyon County on Friday.
Entering as underdogs against a top 10 team in the state, Highlands’ vibe in their dugout is their main objective was to get to next weekend’s semis. If Mother Nature doesn’t do what it did, they may have had that opportunity come Sunday.
“They feel like they can play with anybody,” Benzinger said. “I think for the first couple innings before the rain came, I really feel like that made a big difference in the way the game turned out. And again, I’m not making excuses for them, because they probably wouldn’t accept that, but I do feel like it did hurt us and our momentum and gave them a chance to regroup at the same time.”
Their season comes to a close, the first one under Benzinger at 27-8-1 and will graduate nine seniors, five of them starters in Friday’s contest that includes Schwalbach, Forton, Robinson, Iain Carner and Max McNay.
SPARTANS 6, BLUEBIRDS 5 (9 innings)
HIGHLANDS — 310-000-100 — 5-10-0
SOUTH WARREN — 100-211-001 — 6-11-1
2B — (H) Schwalbach, Hendrix (SW) Green, Fentress, Decker
3B — (H) Forton (SW) Rardin
HR — (H) Hendrix
RBI — (H) Forton 2, Hendrix 2, Carner (SW) Rardin 2, Croghan, Capps, Fentress
R — (H) Schwalbach 2, Hendrix 2, Forton (SW) Green 2, Decker 2, Page, Capps
WP — Coradini. LP — Forton.
Records: Highlands 27-8-1, South Warren 31-8