Sycamore 16, Batavia 7
With the way the Batavia baseball team has been scoring runs and with the wind blowing straight out Tuesday, it figured to be a long afternoon for Sycamore starter Will Strack.
Instead it was the Illinois-bound Strack who did his best to make it a long day for Batavia, cooling off the red-hot Bulldogs with a 16-7 victory in a battle for first place in the Western Sun Conference.
Only 1 of the 7 runs Strack allowed was earned. He struck out eight, while the Spartans offense scored 5 runs in three different innings, capitalizing on one Batavia mistake after another.
"We are a good team that had a really bad day," Batavia coach Matt Holm said.
Batavia starting pitcher Brian Krolikowski was the victim of much of the bad day, with a couple errors leading to five runs in Sycamore's first inning.
Krolikowski left in the fourth inning trailing 9-2.
Scouts from both Illinois and Michigan were on hand to watch Krolikowski, who already has scholarship offers from Illinois State and Northern Illinois.
"We just came out so flat," Krolikowski said. "Against a team like Sycamore, especially when we are trying to take conference, we can't make those errors. That's what practice is for and we've got to work harder and take away those errors. Our team has enough talent those errors shouldn't happen in the first place."
After falling behind 5-0 in the first, the Bulldogs (8-4, 5-2) plated two runs in their half of the first on hits by Alex Beckmann and Tim Drish and 2 Sycamore errors.
"The first inning was one of the craziest innings," Sycamore coach Jason Cavanaugh said. "You've got two really good pitchers going out there and nothing was going right for either one of them. It was a tough day to pitch."
Sycamore (8-2, 6-0) broke the game open with its 5-run fourth. The Spartans led 11-2 in the bottom of the fifth, but two misplayed fly balls in left field led directly to 5 Batavia runs that brought the Bulldogs within 11-7.
That ended the day for Strack (3-1), who would have been out of the inning without any damage if the fly balls were caught. Lefty Kris Williams shut Batavia down in the final two innings.
"Will didn't give up anything," Cavanaugh said. "On a normal day -- I don't know what a normal spring day is anymore -- obviously we don't put up 16 runs. It's a big series. It's more of a test for us."
The fifth inning turned out to be about the only highlight for a Bulldog team that had scored 43 runs in its last two games against DeKalb. Sycamore quickly regained command with a 5-run sixth inning to go up 16-7.
Batavia will try to bounce back today at Sycamore. The Spartans' No. 2 Corey Ullmark (2-0) will pitch, possibly against Jordan Coffey, according to Holm.
"They are a darn good team and if you have a bad day against a good team you are going to have a bad result," Holm said. "We have to get back on and go at them tomorrow."
"He's (Strack) a good thrower and we had trouble hitting him but that's exactly when our defense needs to come to play," Krolikowski said. "If you are not going to put up the runs you've got to play good defense and we didn't do that tonight."