Gordon pitches in, in a pinch, for Warren
Warren sophomore pitcher Wes Gordon had a suprise when he got to the Blue Devils’ home game Saturday.
“Because we have six games in four days when we go down to southern Illinois, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t burn out any arms,” Warren coach Clint Smothers said. “So I decided to call Wes up from the sophomore team. He wasn’t even on the rostor and we had to get a varsity uniform. We leave tomorrow to play six games in four days, which is why we had everybody go only 2 innings.”
Gordon pitched 4 frames to pick up the win in Warren’s 3-2 win over McHenry.
Gordon, wearing No. 18, allowed only 1 infield hit and 1 walk. He struck out a pair.
“I just felt good the whole time,” said Gordon, who will return to the sophomore team. “I knew what I had to do to help the team win.”
Jimmy Nickell started for Warren and was followed by Kyle Kennedy, who tossed an inning.
“All of us were on a pitch count today,” said Nickell, who threw 20 pitches in 2 innings.”I know I am pitching either Monday or Tuesday, so we are trying to be efficient with our pitches. I thought we pitched well and threw strikes, and our hitters did a good job on getting on base.”
McHenry’s Albert Matias led off the game with a walk and went to second on a sacrifice bunt. Blue Devils center fielder Adam Glogovsky made the defensive game of the day as Alex Obenauf hit a towering flyball.
Glogovsky raced into right field to make the catch and then threw a strike to catcher Alex Letto, who tagged Matias out to complete the double play.
“ ‘Glo-Go,’ ” Smothers said. “He came up and threw a strike. That’s a big run.”
First baseman Pat Kenney slammed a solo home run in the bottom of the first off Jamie Rammel to give the Blue Devils the 1-0 lead.
“When we came out today, we had to take the tarp off the field so we really didn’t have a chance to warm up, but we came out strong” said the Purdue-bound Kenney, who also hit a double in the fourth. “He left me a pitch up and I just hit the heck out of it.”
In the top of the third, Matias walked, Cody Freund singled and Devon Gehrke singled to load the bases. Matias scored on a wild pitch and Obanauf hit a sacrifice fly to score Freund to give McHenry a 2-1 lead.
The Blue Devils took the lead for good in the fourth. Nick Orslini highlighted the 2-run inning with an RBI double.
“Our pitchers threw strikes today, “ McHenry coach Brian Rockweiler said. “We had some chances to score, but we just didn’t execute.”