Baseball: South Elgin's offense clicking against Bartlett

No need for a Storm surge this time.

One day after the South Elgin baseball team rallied for 4 runs in the bottom of the seventh to win the series opener against Bartlett in a walk-off, the Storm took the suspense out of Game 2 with an 11-1, 5-inning pounding of their Upstate Eight Valley rival.

South Elgin's offense treated Bartlett's ballpark like a pinball machine, flipping balls in all directions. The Storm collected 13 hits, including doubles by senior Mitch Butvilas and juniors Bryant Diel and Kevin Barry, and were helped by 4 Bartlett errors.

"We all hit the ball pretty hard," said South Elgin junior Adam Walker, who went 2-for-2 with a sacrifice fly and 3 RBI. "We put up 11 runs. That's a good sign."

Meanwhile, South Elgin starting pitcher Jack Stancl threw a 4-hitter that included 3 walks and 3 strikeouts to up his record to 4-1.

The Storm improved to 13-6 overall, 7-1 in the UEC Valley.

"I did not imagine that when we were first starting," Stancl said of his team's record. "The first few games there I (thought) we're going to be shaky, we're going to have to work on things every game and do things like that. Now that we're 13-6 we're really confident about who we are and the teams we've played, that we can beat all these teams around us."

South Elgin solved Bartlett starting pitcher Shane Donovan, who in his previous start on Friday limited Glenbard East to 3 hits and struck out 6 in an 8-4 victory. The senior was lifted from Wednesday's game after allowing 8 runs (6 earned) on 11 hits and 2 walks in 3⅓ innings.

The Storm added 3 runs in the top of the fifth against reliever Matt Johnson to make it a 10-run spread.

"If you look at the hit column, they had a large number and we had a small number," Bartlett coach Chris Pemberton said. "They put balls in play, moved guys over one at a time and then used our gifts to score some runs. We didn't do that very often on our side offensively. We've got to find offense and put balls in play and we're just not doing that right now."

South Elgin scored in bunches. The Storm scored 3 runs in the second inning on 4 hits. They added 5 runs in the fourth on 4 hits and an error, sparked by a 2-run single from Butvilas and a 2-run double by Walker.

Butvilas, who went 2-for-2 with a walk and a sacrifice fly, singled during South Elgin's 3-run fifth inning to drive in his fourth run of the game.

"Coming out and getting the run rule, that's huge for us," Butvilas said. "That's what we want to do to our rivals."

Barry, Diel and Jake Miller each had 2 hits for the Storm.

Tripp Paris, Mike Prang, Austin Hilvert and Matt Johnson accounted for the only hits for Bartlett (6-16, 3-5).

Host South Elgin goes for the 3-game sweep Thursday at 4:30 p.m.