Baseball: Batavia downs Geneva

There are 21 outs in high school baseball so striking out 6.4 times per game like Batavia entering Wednesday's rematch against visiting Geneva tends to limit scoring chances.

Thus, pinch hitter Blake Carlson's go-ahead groundball in a 2-strike count in the bottom of the sixth inning was the contact the Bulldogs needed to win 4-2 in the Upstate Eight River.

After falling behind in the count 1-2 against Geneva reliever Graham Owen, Carlson hit a sharp groundball that forced shortstop Dylan Baer to make a sliding, backhanded stop to his right.

Batavia courtesy runner Michael Downs was on third base and made a beeline for the plate upon contact. Baer gathered the ball, got to his feet and fired to the plate, but Downs slid in safely ahead of the tag to stake the Bulldogs a 3-2 lead. Glenn Albanese followed with a run-scoring single to make it 4-2.

"I was just trying to put it in play and see what would happen," Carlson said. "And it did happen."

Batavia (5-11, 3-9) absorbed 8 more strikeouts against Geneva starting pitcher Sean Sinisko, "but we did some good things with 2 strikes and that's something that we're really focusing on," coach Alex Beckmann said.

Batavia starting pitcher Jake Robinson (3-0) returned to the mound for the top of the seventh and issued a one-out walk to Cullen Geary. Up next, Baer rolled a groundball up the middle. Albanese, Batavia's shortstop, bobbled the ball initially, picked it up, stepped on second base ahead of a sliding Geary, and hopped over him. Albanese made no attempt to first base. The field umpire called Geary out for interfering with Albanese, an automatic double play by rule that ended the game.

"Very interesting," Robinson said. "At first I just thought we were going to go on to the next play. Then they called him out. I was amazed at first. It happens in baseball."

Robinson tossed a 78-pitch 5-hitter with 2 walks and 5 strikeouts.

"He was in control," Beckmann said. "You could just tell from his demeanor on the mound."

"My pitching coach (Brian Krolikowski) was making me change up my speeds, which I thought I did really well," Robinson said. "I was hitting my locations."

The Bulldogs took a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning on an infield nubber of the bat of Tyler Munoz, scoring Brent Norkus.

Geneva (14-8, 11-5) leapfrogged to a 2-1 lead in the top of the fifth when Jeremy Davis stroked a two-out, 2-run triple to the right-field corner, the only hit for extra bases against Robinson.

"I knew we had to do something big," Davis said. "We had to have an answer for that one run they scored. I was just trying to make something happen and he gave me a pitch to hit."

Geneva committed multiple mistakes, including 3 fielding errors. A one-out infield throwing error in the bottom of the fifth put a Batavia runner in scoring position for Quinn O'Brien. He tied the game with a run-scoring single.

In the decisive sixth inning Owen was ahead in the count 0-2 against Batavia leadoff man Munoz before hitting him with the next pitch. Later in the inning, Geneva's second baseman made a bad throw back to Owen after a pickoff attempt. That allowed Downs to scamper to third base with one out, and he scored against a drawn-in infield on Carlson's groundball.

"We made mistakes all day, little mistakes that affected us," Geneva coach Brad Wendell said. "We haven't been clean in the field. Even (Tuesday's) good win, early on we made mistakes. We have to be cleaner."