Baseball: Batavia snaps South Elgin's win streak at 12

With a strong wind blowing in Saturday, the Batavia and South Elgin baseball teams knew they would have to manufacture runs.

Batavia proved better at it, eking out a 2-1 Upstate Eight Conference victory that snapped host South Elgin's 12-game winning streak.

"Runs were going to be very hard to come by today obviously, with the cold and the wind and all that," said Batavia coach Alex Beckman. "A little small ball really helped us today - that's what won us the game."

The first three innings was a scoreless duel between the Bulldogs' Jared Martin and the Storm's Jack Stancl.

South Elgin broke the deadlock with an unearned run in the bottom of the fourth. Leadoff batter Nate Gomez reached on ain infield error. Two batters later, another infield error on Cameron Kovanda's grounder allowed Gomez to score from second when the ball rolled to Batavia dugout.

After allowing Batavia (7-11, 5-8) to reach base in the first, Stancl sailed through the next three innings facing the minimum number of batters in each frame.

Stancl retired Tyler Munoz on a groundout to start the fifth inning. Brent Norkus then coaxed a walk out of Stancl on an 11-pitch at bat. Michael Downs followed with a double to the left-field gap, the only extra base hit of the game, that advanced Norkus to third. The senior scored when John Lemon beat out a grounder deep in the hole at short. Downs scored the winning run on Martin's bunt single to the right side of the infield.

"All week we've been practicing bunting," Martin said. "I finally got to put it to use today."

South Elgin (12-3, 10-1) had scoring opportunities but Martin, backed up by his defense, wiggled out of the jams. The Storm had runners in scoring position in 5 innings.

"A few mistakes cost us the game. Jack Stancl pitched an outstanding game," said South Elgin coach Jim Kating. "We had opportunities, we just couldn't come through. We got picked off. We put a few hit and runs on and got caught with our heads down and not seeing where the ball was going."

In the bottom of the seventh with one out, South Elgin's Zach Saunders reached first on a dropped third strike. The junior catcher advanced to second when Jack Watkins' blooper to center eluded the mitt of diving center fielder Jake Robinson. Martin (1-0) then induced the next two batters to fly out to Robinson to end the game.

"We knew that the balls weren't going to travel very far in this wind so the main goal was to throw strikes," said Martin. "I started working my curveball in late in the game to throw the batters off."

"Jared did an outstanding job pumping the zone," Beckman said. "They had a couple balls hit real hard but hung up in the wind and we ran them down."

Stancl took the loss, dropping his record to 4-1.