Bolle, Metea Valley handcuff Elgin
A bad-hop, 2-run single by Andrew Fox staked Metea Valley to a first-inning lead, and left-hander Tom Bolle relied on his spinning curveball and changeup to maintain it throughout a 3-1 Upstate Eight Conference victory at Elgin Monday afternoon.
Bolle outdueled Elgin’s Alex Doty by tossing a complete-game 3-hitter in a gusting crosswind. He held Elgin to 1 unearned run in the fourth inning and struck out a career-best 10 hitters to send the Maroons to their fourth straight defeat.
“The wind helps my curveball a little bit,” said Bolle, who walked one batter and hit another with a pitch, both in the third inning. “I felt good, but I really got it going after the fourth inning. After that I got cruising.”
Bolle struck out 2 Maroons in both the fifth and sixth innings, and he retired the bottom of the Elgin order in order in the seventh to improve his record to 2-1.
“Tom was really good and he’s been really good in all his starts,” Metea Valley coach Craig Tomczak said. “He was really mixing his pitches well. He’s worked a lot on his curveball and changeup and he was throwing all three pitches for strikes.”
The Maroons scored 8 runs Saturday in a 9-8 loss to Schaumburg, but they had trouble timing Bolle’s curveball. Seven Elgin hitters struck out on curveballs. Bolle slipped fastballs by three more.
“Three runs should be enough to win a ballgame,” said Elgin coach David Foerster, whose team slipped to 4-6, 0-3. “We needed to be more disciplined and keep our hands back. We swung at too many bad pitches. We need a little better approach from a veteran team. These aren’t new guys out there.”
Metea Valley (4-4, 1-2) got off to a fast start in the first inning with singles from Kenny Obendorf and Jake Charuk. Charuk’s stolen base put runners at first and third with no outs. Doty nearly escaped the threat with a popup and a strikeout, but a groundball toward shortstop Andrew Higdon took a bad hop and got by him, allowing both runners to score for a 2-0 lead.
Elgin bunched 2 of its 3 hits together in the fourth inning. Derek Strohmaier led off with a clean single to right field, and Ryan Sitter singled to left with two outs. The Maroons notched their only run when Drew Bloomquist’s slow roller up the line dribbled under the Metea Valley third baseman’s glove for an error, allowing Strohmaier to score from second base and trim the deficit to 2-1.
The damage could have been worse had center fielder Ryan Solomon not made a tremendous diving catch of Jake Bartelt’s line drive to center field for the first out. Solomon raced back and caught the ball on a full dive with his back to the infield.
“It was hard to judge because it was hit right at me,” Solomon said. “At the last second I jumped up and kind of got lucky.”
Doty kept the Maroons within 2-1 until the fifth inning, when Obendorf led off with a home run to right field. With the count 2-2, the at-bat was interrupted for five minutes while the home-plate umpire was treated after being struck on the wrist by a foul tip.
Obendorf fouled off a pitch when play resumed, then sent a high flyball into the jet stream. The ball carried over the fence for his first home run of the season.
“I left a lot of balls up and that’s not good,” Doty said. “I was pitching through soreness in my shoulder from the third inning on — it’s just that time of year. A lot of tenderness kicked in and I wasn’t as effective.”
Nevertheless, Doty (1-2) held the Mustangs to 6 hits in 6 innings. He recorded 5 or his 7 strikeouts in the first three innings.