MORAN — A 10-game winning streak to end the regular season showed just how far Marmaton Valley High’s baseball program has progressed.
But an 11-4 loss to Erie Friday evening in the Class 2-1A regional playoffs “shows we’re not where we want to be,” head coach Adam Borth said.
The defeat ended Marmaton Valley’s season with a 14-11 record. The 14 wins are more than the Wildcat win totals from the past two seasons combined (12).
“We were a six-win team last season and a six-win team the season before that,” Borth said. “We’re moving in the right direction.”
Friday’s biggest issues came in the form of walks (eight), hit batters (four) and errors (three), which led to four unearned runs in the game, and allowed Erie to break open a back-and-forth affair in the top of the seventh.
“We put runners on base, and when you put runners on, they tend to almost always come around to score, and not necessarily on hard-hit balls,” Borth noted.
Things were looking rosy in the early going for the Wildcats.
A leadoff single from Tyler Lord and a walk to Kele Michael led to an RBI single from Daniel Fewins, a run-scoring error and then an RBI grounder from Brendon Newman to give Marmaton Valley a quick 3-0 lead.
And with Lord striking out the side in the top of the second — all on called third strikes — things were running smoothly.
But leadoff walks in both the third and fourth innings proved costly as Erie knotted the score at 3-3.
An error in the top of the fifth, followed by three straight two-out doubles pushed across two more runs to put Erie on top for good, 5-3.
Marmaton Valley didn’t go away quietly. Brevyn Campbell led off the bottom of the frame with a single and scored on Mason Ferguson’s sacrifice fly.
But the Red Devils took advantage of a hit batter in the top of the sixth to re-establish a two-run cushion at 6-4.
The Wildcats threatened with a two-out rally of their own when Fewins doubled, but he was caught in a rundown on Newman’s infield single for the final out of the sixth.
Four walks and a hit batter in the top of the seventh allowed Erie to take full control.
