Fine performance by Olbrot goes for naught as Morris baseball falls

PERU — Luke Olbrot didn't find out he was going to be the starting pitcher in Morris' opening game in the LaSalle-Peru Invitational Series against Oak Forest until the team bus was halfway to Peru.

That didn't stop the sophomore right-hander from throwing an impressive complete game in his first varsity action, as he went six innings and allowed five runs, with only two of them earned, on seven hits and one walk while striking out two.

Unfortunately for the Redskins, they were only able to manage two runs on four hits, two each by Danny Borgstrom and Andy Peters, as they dropped a 5-2 decision. The loss puts them in a 10 a.m. game Saturday at Dickinson Field in Oglesby.

"Luke did everything we could have asked of him and more," Morris coach Todd Kein said. "For a sophomore to come up in his first varsity game and perform the way he did was just outstanding. He deserved a lot better than he got.

"He threw a lot of strikes and we knew we'd have to play good defense behind him. At some points, we did that, but at others, we didn't."

Oak Forest got on the scoreboard first, plating a pair of runs in the bottom of the third inning, when the Bengals amassed four of their seven hits off of Olbrot.

Mike Faletti and Connor Oliver each singled to start the inning. An out later, a single by Tyler Suchy drove in Faletti and Trevor Hauscherr plated Oliver with a grounder to second. In the bottom of the fifth with two outs, Suchy reached second on an error and, after Hauscherr was hit by a pitch, scored on a single by Mike Edwards for a 3-0 Oak Forest lead.

With two outs in the top of the sixth, Morris struck quickly for its two run. Borgstrom launched his fifth homer of the year to right and, on the next pitch, Peters doubled to right-center. A wild pitch on the first pitch to Michael Metesh moved Peters to third and, on the next pitch, Metesh reached on a fielding error by the third baseman, allowing Peters to score to bring the Redskins (14-14) to within 3-2.

In the bottom of the sixth, though, two more unearned runs came across as the first two Oak Forest batters reached on errors and later scored, one on a sacrifice by Faletti and one on a single by pinch-hitter Raul Flores.

"What was very disappointing today was that we could only score two runs against their pitcher," Kein said. "All the teams in this tournament are in the same boat. It's the end of a long week and the pitching staffs are going to be pretty well used up. We got a great performance out of our pitcher, but we couldn't take advantage of them not being able to use their best guys.

"But, we've got two games tomorrow [Saturday]. We'll see who wants to come to play and who doesn't. There are a lot of guys sitting on our bench that have been working hard all season. We'll make a few changes and see what happens."