OTTAWA — The Post 15 Indians took a mixed squad of Double-A and Single-A players to Ottawa on Friday. In the doubleheader, the Single-A team was clipped by a lone run in each game losing to Ottawa 6-5 and 3-2.
In the first game, starting pitcher Darius Greenawalt was outstanding for the Indians, holding the Ottawa offense to one run over the game’s first four innings. Iola jumped out to a 5-1 advantage over the home team.
“We hit the ball well at times,” Coach Kris Collins said. “We had too many base-running errors.”
After Greenawalt began to appear to be tiring out the Indians handed the ball to their bullpen and the game changed course.
Ottawa posted one run in the fifth inning to cut the lead to 5-2, but in the bottom of the sixth, their bats really heated up against Iolan pitching.
Four straight hits led to four runs for Ottawa and they took a 6-5 lead over the Indians.
Iola was unable to rally back in the seventh inning as Ottawa was to retire the Indians’ two, three and four hitters 1-2-3.
Reliever Justice Pugh was charged with the loss for Iola.
Game two was a much different story for Iola, but the end result was the same unfortunate one.
In the nightcap, it was Ottawa that got out to an early advantage and Iola came back.
Iola scored one run in the second inning and Ethan Tavarez – one of the Double-A players filling in for the day – hit a triple and eventually scored in the fourth frame to provide the Indians with two runs, but unfortunately for the visitors those were the only two runs they could muster against Ottawa’s pitching.
Iola ended up falling by a score of 3-2, despite an excellent pitching performance from both Hesson Murrow and Nate Berry.
“We had great pitching all day,” Collins said. “We had a couple bad innings and couple errors that hurt us, but our pitching was great the entire time.”
Despite the losses, Collins was impressed with the performances he got from two of his younger players, Hunter Baughn and Nate Berry.
“Hunter has been improving well all year and has really been hitting the ball well lately,” Collins said. “Nate has really picked it up too.”
EXTRA COACHES
With Hunter Preston, Noah Ashmore, Griffin Vorhees, Wyatt Suefert, Calvin Delich, Casen Barker and Lane Bahnsen all having to miss Friday’s games, the Indians had to call three players down from their Double-A club.
