Big 3rd inning key in Ottawa’s 13-9 win over Rochelle

OTTAWA – The Ottawa baseball team fell behind early against Rochelle in Monday’s Interstate 8 Conference game.

However, the Pirates turned a two-run deficit into a five-run lead with a seven-run third inning, added four runs over the next three innings and eventually secured a 13-9 victory.

“To be honest, this was an ugly played baseball game for us,” Ottawa coach Levi Ericson said. “Credit Rochelle, they don’t strike out a lot. They make you play defense, and they are scrappy. The first couple innings we just all-around struggled. Then in the third we were able to get some traffic on the base paths, took the lead and then gave ourselves a little cushion.”

The victory improved Ottawa to 13-13 overall and 5-7 in I-8 play. Rochelle dropped to 7-16 and 0-13.

The Hubs scored three times in the top of the first off Ottawa starter and winning pitcher George Shumway (4 IP, 12 H, 8 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 5 K), but the hosts responded with two runs in their half of the inning on an RBI ground out by Jace Veith and a sacrifice fly by Brendyn Fuchs.

Trailing 4-2, Ottawa scored seven runs in the third off Rochelle starting and losing pitcher Johnny Andrist (2 IP, 2 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 7 BB) and reliever Dylan Manning (3⅓ IP, 6 H, 7 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 2 K) with a key RBI double by Harry Carretto, RBI singles from Colt Bryson and Fuchs and a sac fly by Veith.

Rochelle made it 9-8 with a four-run fourth inning, but Ottawa again responded, scoring a pair of runs on errors.

Ottawa scored one in the fifth, and leadoff man Bryson’s RBI base hit in the sixth closed out the day’s scoring.

Bryson reached base four times and drove in four runs to lead Ottawa, while Jacob Rosetto and Shumway each had two hits. Noah Marvin pitched the final three innings to earn the save, giving up two hits and one run with a walk and a strikeout.

“Colt is our spark plug,” Ericson said. “He plays hard and with a ton of energy. When he has been good at the plate for us, it has usually carried over down through the lineup. He played part of leadoff guy really well for us today, got on base and moved guys around.

“Noah has been really effective for us all season and exceeded in his role. We really didn’t know coming into this season who our late game [pitcher] was going to be, but I think maybe in the game against Metamora very early in the season he came in and gave us two shutout innings in a one-run game. He has done a great job of coming in and changing the timing for batters.”

Rochelle, which finished with 14 hits, was led by three hits apiece from Brody Bruns (two RBIs) and Ethan Goodwin (RBI), while Carson Lewis, Brandyn Metzger (two RBIs) and Van Gerber each had two hits.

“I was really happy with how we hit the ball today, but we issued 10 walks, hit three batters and had four fielding errors,“ Rochelle coach Jarrod Reynolds said. ”You’re just not going to win many games giving teams that many extra baserunners and extra outs. I didn’t feel like we gave up very many hard-hit balls, but the walks really hurt us.

“We were coming off a couple of close games against La Salle-Peru last week where we played pretty well. Our main problem this season, and today was a good example, has been not being able to put a full game together. When we hit, we struggle pitching and when the pitching has been good, we haven’t been able to score runs.”

The series continues Wednesday in Rochelle and they finish in Ottawa on Thursday.