Baseball: Franks settles in after shaky start in Wheaton Warrenville South’s win over St. Charles East

Considering the start to the day of Wheaton Warrenville South pitcher Reece Franks it would have been reasonable, if not even justifiable, for him to doubt himself.

Franks hit the first batter of the game, struck out the second, before surrendering a single and then a two-run homer to St. Charles East’s Gavin Fuscone.

But instead of wallowing, Franks buckled down a went back to work, retiring the next two batters he faced to get the Tigers out of the inning.

Those two outs would start a string of 14 of 15 batters he’d retire, and with the pitching locked down a potent offense went about making sure that first-inning surge from the Saints was just a blip on its way to a 12-5 DuKane Conference victory on Tuesday.

“I mean, I trust our defense. We arguably have the best defense in the conference,” Franks said. “So I just trust my guys behind me that they will make the plays always.”

Franks pitched like a man with that sort of confidence, allowing just a third-inning walk to Kyle Lapose, who would come around to score a run after a stolen base and two groundouts.

“He regrouped, that’s for sure,” Wheaton Warrenville South coach John Scherrman said. “When he got ahead of hitters, just a different story for him. It’s not unique to him but that’s what kept him going and got us back into this thing, him throwing strikes.”

The Tigers wasted very little time getting back into the contest, pushing across five runs in their half of the second inning. WW South (8-2-1) got things going in the bottom of the order as the five through eight hitters provided three singles from Landon Ligler, Brandon Esposito and Yiannis Bozonelas, and Clark Bailey coaxed a walk.

All four of those players would score, two on an double from Blake Snyder, one on an RBI single from Caleb Mease and another on an RBI groundout from Clark Jensen. That gave the Tigers a 5-3 lead they would not relinquish.

And with the lead in their pocket, the Tigers went about stacking on some more runs in a different way. Capitalizing on St. Charles East’s struggles in fielding bunts, the Tigers put down three in a row at one point, only one of which netted an out for the Saints. When the dust cleared, the Tigers had another five-run inning despite just two balls leaving the infield, although one of them was a fence-rattling long single from Mease.

“I like the diversity of our offense. We have guys that can drive the ball out of the ballpark, even though we didn’t today, but guys are certainly threats,” Scherrman said. “And we have guys that can steal bases. We just needed to execute some sacrifice bunts and squeeze there.

“So it was a good day offensively.”

With the comfortable lead in hand, Franks’ day was done after five innings giving way to Clark Jensen.

Jensen did surrender a solo home run to James Feigleson in the sixth inning, but Jensen recorded four strikeouts over two innings of strong work to close out the win.

“On a day like today for him (Franks) and Clark to give up only five runs on a wind blowing out day when they score three early, my hat is off to those two,” Scherrman said.

It was a frustrating loss for the Saints (7-4) after the promising start.

After jumping out to a 3-0 start, St. Charles East starter Fuscone quickly sent the Tigers back into the field after allowing a leadoff walk.

It was the only time all day that the Tigers would not have what seemed to be constant traffic on the basepaths.

“That’s baseball,” St. Charles East coach Derek Sotor said. “You’ve got to play seven innings. We started off strong, especially in our conference that’s a buzzsaw, you have to bring your best in all three phases or things start to snowball.”