Wednesday Roundup: Cavs Plate Nine To Beat Menomonie

Playing calm, collected and determined, it appears no lead is safe for opposing teams against the Eau Claire Cavaliers.

The Menomonie Eagles got a taste of that Wednesday when the Cavs erased an early Eagles lead and turned it into a big 9-4 win in a nonleague game at Carson Park.

Menomonie, the defending Wisconsin Baseball Association state champion, got two runs in the first inning when former Cavalier and Menomonie product Ben Otto tripled to put his team on top.

Menomonie added two more runs in the third before the Cavaliers’ bullpen shut the door.

“They’re an excellent team,” Cavaliers manager Mark McHorney said of the Eagles. “They played us last year and cooked us pretty good here.”

Menomonie starter Matt Hoeft held Eau Claire to just two baserunners until the Cavs scored two in the fifth inning to get on the board.

The lefty pitched a complete game and took the loss, surrendering seven earned runs while not recording a strikeout.

“Their pitcher, give him credit,” McHorney said. “He had us off balance and out on our front foot. That’s the kind of pitcher that can give us trouble at times, but our guys adjusted.”

Brett Vavra had three hits and scored three times for the Cavaliers. Yuuki Nishimoto and R.J. Page each had a pair of RBIs for Eau Claire.

Menomonie committed two errors in each of the last two innings to allow Eau Claire to claim the lead for good.

“We’re not a big three-run home run team,” McHorney said. “We believe in little baseball. Tonight it paid up for us. Get the ball in play and most of the time good things will happen.”

Otto’s two RBIs led Menomonie, while Erik Johnson went 3-for-4 and Luke Schultz added a pair of hits and two runs.

Relief pitchers Yuji Nakajima, Cory Bonner and Tyler Dierke combined to throw seven innings and allowed no runs and four hits while striking out six between them.

After a tough Wisconsin State League series with the Kenosha Kings over the weekend, McHorney was pleased with the way his team rebounded.

“It was a lot of emotion playing Kenosha,” McHorney said. “You put a lot of eggs in one basket for that weekend because you know what it means. Sometimes it’s tough to come in a night like this without that same emotion, but the guys came back well tonight.”

Cavaliers 9, Eagles 4

MENOMONIE (4)

AB-R-H-RBI: Kasey Kruse, 2b, 4-1-1-0; Tyler Naatz, lf, 4-1-1-0; Luke Schultz, 3b, 4-2-2-0; Ben Otto, ss, 4-0-1-2; Joe Mohr, cf, 5-0-0-1; Andy Lorenzen, 1b, 4-0-0-1; Erik Johnson, rf, 4-0-3-0; Jon Ewald, dh, 3-0-0-0; Austin Bruandt, c, 4-0-1-0; Matt Hoeft, p, 0-0-0-0. Totals 36-4-9-4.

EAU CLAIRE (9)

Brady Burzynski, cf, 4-0-1-0; Tyler Duex, 2-0-0-2; LaDarrius Cole, lf, 3-0-1-0; Brian Burman, c, 4-0-0-0; Kyle Comer, ss, 4-1-1-0; Yuki Yasuda, 3b, 4-1-1-1; Brett Vavra, rf, 4-3-3-0; Yuuki Nishimoto, dh, 3-3-1-2; R.J. Page, 1b, 3-1-1-2; Cale Ross, p, 0-0-0-0; Yuji Nakajima, p, 0-0-0-0; Cory Bonner, p, 0-0-0-0; Tyler Dierke, p, 0-0-0-0. Totals 31-9-9-7.

Menomonie 202 000 000 — 4 9 5

Eau Claire 000 020 34x — 9 10 3

E — Schultz 4, Hoeft; Comer, Duex, Vavra. LOB — Menomonie 10, Eau Claire 5 2B — Comer. 3B — Otto. SB — Nishimoto, Vavra, Yasuda. SAC — Duex 2, Nishimoto, Page.

Menomonie IP H R ER BB SO

Hoeft, L 8 10 9 7 2 0

Eau Claire

Ross 2 6 4 4 1 0

Nakajima 3 2 0 0 1 2

Bonner, W 4 2 0 0 0 2

Dierke 1 0 0 0 0 2

WP — Hoeft; Ross. HBP — by Ross (Kruse, Otto).

Story by: The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram

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It was Chad Langley night at Green Bay’s Vandenplas Field Wednesday night.

Langley delivered a seventh inning home run to give the Sheboygan A’s a 4-3 lead and followed it with a clutch 2-out ninth inning single to give them a 5-4 Northeastern Wisconsin League victory over the Green Bay Storm. That was after he contributed a sacrifice fly and a pair of singles to figure in all five A’s scores.

The win puts the A’s at 11-7 in the league with two games remaining against the Oshkosh Giants. At worst, the club will finish third in the league behind Menasha and Appleton.

The A’s scored one run in every other inning to trump Green Bay’s 3-run rally in the second and solo score in the top of the eighth.

Langley’s hot bat started the A’s scoring in the first with a sacrifice fly, but Green Bay took a 3-1 lead with a 4-hit third inning rally. Sam Mattheis’ RBI single was the third hit of the A’s third inning and they closed it to 3-2. Mattheis drove in his second run of the night following an error and Langley’s base hit to tie it at three after five innings.

Langley’s long seventh inning home run gave the A’s a 4-3 lead. But, after two outs a costly throwing error contributed to Green Bay’s game-tying fourth run in the eighth.

The A’s won it in the ninth. Jeremy McCarty started the inning with a base hit. He was forced at second, but the hustling Luke Maldonado beat the double play throw to first base.

After the second out, Harry Steldt had a great at bat to draw a walk and keep the inning alive and then Langley delivered the tie-breaking hit that would ultimately be the game winner.

Derek Loomans got the win, working eight innings against the solid Storm line-up and pitching his way out of one troublesome inning after another. Green Bay left 12 men on base.

One of them was Doug Coe’s pinch runner Chris Laux after Coe led off the bottom of the ninth with a double. But after Laux was moved to third via a sacrifice bunt, Jordan DeBoer retired the final two hitters on ground balls to earn the save for the A’s.

Langley finished 4-for-4 with a home run and a sac-fly for three runs batted in. Mattheis had three hits and two runs batted in and DeBoer, who started the game at second base and finished on the mound, had two hits.

The A’s travel to Kenosha for a Wisconsin State League game Thursday night and then launch Langsdorf League playoff action Saturday night with a 7:30 p.m. game at Wildwood against either Burlington, Northern Illinois or West Allis, which ever emerges from the first two rounds of the stepladder qualifying series.

Story by: SheboyganBaseball.org

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The Manitowoc Banidts defeated the Oshkosh Giants by a final score of 12-6 Wednesday night in Oshkosh. The game was a Northeastern Wisconsin Baseball League contest. The Bandits currently sit 2.5 games out of the last playoff spot in the NEW with five games remaining while the Giants are three games back with eight games remaining.

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The Lombard Orioles and Addison Braves each won their second round Chicago Suburban Baseball League playoff games on Wednesday, with the Orioles winning 6-1 over the Crestwood Panthers and the Braves winning 9-3 over the Homestead Ranchers.