Baseball: Rushed Ziebell, Palatine cool off Vernon Hills

Shorter could be better.

Palatine pitcher Brandon Ziebell had less time to warm up Tuesday due to a late rainstorm at Vernon Hills and a pesky lightning detector. That caused the game to begin 45 minutes late.

Ziebell took it all in stride. The senior struck out five while scattering five Vernon Hills hits. That performance helped Palatine knock off the Cougars 3-1 in five innings in a game shortened due to darkness.

“Maybe I should just not warm up fully before every game,” Ziebell said. “I just didn’t have enough time because of the weather. But I felt great, though. Every pitch was working today. I really felt like I was locked in.”

Ziebell, who struggled in his first two outings for Palatine (3-4), kept Vernon Hills in check. And he made big pitches to force the Cougars to leave six runners on base.

“Today doesn’t happen without us playing on the turf here,” Ziebell said. “I got some good groundballs and my guys made the plays behind me.”

Palatine, which began the season with four consecutive losses, has now won three in a row.

“We graduated a majority of our roster last year,” Palatine coach Brent Carroll said. “We knew it was going to be some growing pains early. The speed of the game was a little to fast for us out of the gate. But we seem to be clicking now.”

Palatine pushed their first run across in the top of the second. And the Pirates did it without a hit.

Joey Kurey walked and went to second on fielder’s choice and then to third on a wild pitch. He then scored as his brother Anthony reached on a two-out throwing error.

Palatine scored twice in the next inning. Walks again got things rolling for the Pirates.

Maddux Heilman led off with a walk and then stole second and third. Owen Hong then walked with one out and then promptly stole second.

With second and third, Heilman came in to score on a wild pitch with Hung moving to third. Hong trotted home on Palatine’s first hit of the day by Joey Kurey that was lined off the Vernon Hills pitcher to make it 3-0.

“Waiting for the bus for an extra hour was kind of hard,” Joey Kurey said. “I was just trying to put the ball in play. It felt pretty good.”

Vernon Hills (2-1-1), which won two games during its trip over spring break to Tennessee, had scoring opportunities.

But the Cougars, who have 14 seniors, could not break through until the fifth when Connor Brockway came up with his third hit of the day, scoring a hustling Devin Ratajczyk, who came in all the way from first base.

“We had what I would call ‘inexcusables,’” Vernon Hills coach Pasquale Atteo said. “We made some mental mistakes out there today. We took some momentum from ourselves when we had runners in first and second and couldn’t score.”