Baseball: Minooka sophomore Ryan Anderson outduels Oswego East ace Ashton Izzi

OSWEGO – Ryan Anderson eyed the phalanx of scouts behind home plate to watch his counterpart, absorbed the howling wind blowing in his face and pitched his typical game.

As usual, that meant a Minooka win.

Minooka’s lanky, 6-foot-5 sophomore right-hander struck out seven over five shutout innings. Anderson outdueled Oswego East ace Ashton Izzi, a Wichita State recruit, and Minooka took advantage of two key errors for a 4-1 win Monday at Oswego East.

[ Photos: Minooka vs. Oswego East baseball ]

“I think I did very good on this very cold day,” said Anderson, who scattered five hits and walked one. “During the day I was thinking about it all the time, that there would be a lot of scouts there today. I was just like, ‘It’s just another day.’ All the scouts out there, just go out there and throw like I usually do. That’s what I did.”

Minooka coach Jeff Petrovic was hardly surprised to see Anderson take all the extra eyeballs in stride.

Anderson was a huge part of the Indians’ pitching staff as a freshman last spring, and with Monday’s win improved to 7-0 on this season.

“He’s pretty unflappable, doesn’t let things bother him. He’s completely capable of pitching, whoever shows up,” Petrovic said. “They’re going to be there to see him pretty soon.

“Ryan is second fiddle to nobody, but he does it in different ways. The MLB scouts that are here, they fall in love with a radar. Izzi throws it hard, and he is a fantastic pitcher, best pitcher we’ve seen this year. But Ryan throws hard enough and he has everything along with it, the intangibles. He’s got tremendous composure, throws a lot of different pitches for strikes – he’s not a one-pitch guy – and he’s mature well beyond his years.”

Anderson allowed base runners in four of his five innings but didn’t buckle – and seemed to get stronger as the game progressed. Anderson struck out the side in the fourth and fifth innings, stranding a runner in each. Only one of his outs left the infield.

“I throw a fastball and a sinker and a changeup, and I feel like I’m able to get a lot of sink on all of those pitches, and I’m able to get a bunch of ground balls when I need them,” Anderson said. “I felt pretty good going into my last inning. We were up a run, and I needed to bear down. I had to get through it and battle for us.”

He needed to against the hard-throwing Izzi, who is on the MLB draft radar with a fastball in the low 90s.

Izzi recorded 11 strikeouts, striking out the side in the third and fourth innings, with five of his strikeouts coming courtesy of a devastating slider that he’s tweaked in the past year.

“I worked on that in the offseason and got it refined, and now I think it’s a real tool in my tool belt,” Izzi said. “I worked with a pitching coach and he helped me with my grip, my arm speed, my arm path just to make sure that it moved the way I want to. It’s a sharper break, and it’s got more velocity, too.”

Minooka (15-4, 4-0 Southwest Prairie West) scratched across the first of its four unearned runs in the second inning. Sully Minor reached on an infield hit, stole second and took third on a passed ball. Izzi got back-to-break strikeouts, but Minor scored on a two-out throwing error.

“Ashton competed, did exactly what we needed him to do,” Oswego East coach Brian Schaeffer said. “He got ground balls in the right situations, he threw a gem. We couldn’t back him up, and they took advantage.”

Indeed, Minooka did so again in a three-run fifth. Andrew Forillo doubled to lead off the inning, and after a strikeout, Ivan Dahlberg’s ground ball went underneath an infielder’s glove, bringing in Forillo. That ended Izzi’s day, and two more runs came in after that on a Mitch Thomas double and an Andrew Mack single.

“We didn’t do anything with Izzi to be honest, we were able to steal some bases when we got guys on – our first couple runs came off mistakes,” Petrovic said. “That’s what you have to do is put the ball in play and make them make plays. High school kids make mistakes. That’s how it is.”

Oswego East (6-7, 3-1) scored its lone run in the sixth, Noah Edders singling in Josh Polubinski. But the Wolves stranded six base runners and had two more thrown out on the bases by Dahlberg.

“We were putting the ball in play, but we weren’t making hard contact, and that’s what you need,” Schaeffer said. “We couldn’t find that one remedy to move them over.”