Baseball: Ottawa defense, Adam Swanson outplay La Salle-Peru to claim I-8 rubber game

OTTAWA – Pitching backed by a defense that’s on point is, forgive the pun, an entirely different ballgame than trying to pitch backed by a defense having a rough night.

Just ask Ottawa’s Adam Swanson and La Salle-Peru’s Brady Backes after Wednesday night’s 7-0 Pirates victory in the rubber game of a three-game Interstate 8 Conference series under the lights at King Field.

Backes had to endure five fielding errors behind him, leading to six unearned Ottawa runs, and finished with a frustrating pitching line that included more runs allowed than combined hits and walks surrendered. Swanson, meanwhile, saw his defense overcome its lone fielding error immediately with a snappy 6-3 double play started by shortstop Jacob Rosetto and carried a no-hitter two outs into the sixth inning of his complete-game, one-hit shutout of the Cavaliers.

“I’m not going to lie: The first inning was probably the most nervous I’ve been all year,” the sophomore Swanson said, referring to the fact that he was taking the ball against Ottawa’s archrival in the deciding game of the series. “After the first few innings, we got some momentum going, though, and I felt fine out there.

“It feels great [when your defense is playing well], because I know no matter what kind of contact they hit, I know the fielders can make the play.”

Ottawa (8-13, 3-6 I-8) wins the series over the Cavaliers (8-14, 1-8), who committed one error in the first inning and let that runner score by allowing an infield chopper to become a bad-hop single before committing four more errors in a disastrous five-run fourth.

Jack Henson scored leadoff batter Jace Veith with the odd-hop RBI to third base in the first inning to make it 1-0 in favor of the Pirates. Packston Miller followed with an honest line single that was mishandled in center field to score Ottawa’s second run. Three more L-P miscues and a mental error – allowing two runs to score on an RBI infield single when Veith reached as the Cavaliers hesitated to cover first base on a routine grounder to the right side – made it 6-0 without the Pirates hitting the ball much better than the Cavaliers to that point.

“Coming off a really good victory yesterday, I thought we would’ve been sharper,” L-P coach Matt Glupczynsk said. “We weren’t, and hats off to Ottawa for putting the ball in play, putting some pressure on us and taking the series.

“I thought early we put the barrel on a lot of balls, but they were ground balls to the shortstop or fly balls to the left fielder. One hit, all of those errors. It’s very tough to win a ballgame that way.”

La Salle-Peru managed its first hit on a ground ball single inside the third base bag off the bat of leadoff man Jack Jereb with two outs in the sixth. But Ottawa added an insurance run in the bottom half – the only earned run of the ballgame – when Miller smacked a leadoff single for his second hit of the night and later hustled in to score from second on a routine 4-6-3 double play.

Seven runs were plenty and then some for Swanson, who struck out five and allowed one hit and one walk in the complete-game effort, and the Pirates defense.

“With Adam on the mound, we know he’s going to throw a lot of strikes,” Pirates coach Tyler Wargo said. “We’ve got to be ready defensively, and we were. I think we only had one error, and then we get a double play the next pitch to cancel it out. .

“A great defensive performance for us, especially with what [Swanson did], just attacking the zone, and we just did enough offensively, taking advantage of their miscues at times. We didn’t hit it great, but obviously enough to put some runs on the board.”

Backes (4 IP, 0 ER, 4 H, 1 BB, 5 K) suffered the hard-luck loss, allowing the six unearned runs before being relieved by Brendan Boudreau (2 IP, 1 ER, 1 H, 1 BB, 1 K).