Baseball: Trey Hernandez, hot-swinging Oswego bats rally past Plainfield South

OSWEGO – Trey Hernandez was the last player to join Oswego’s postgame huddle as he had ice applied to a finger hurt sliding into home plate.

Cold finger, yes, but Hernandez swung a hot bat Monday.

Hernandez’s two-run go-ahead single highlighted a five-run fourth inning in which the Panthers sent 10 batters to the plate. Oswego scored a season-high run total in rallying past visiting Plainfield South, 8-6, in the Southwest Prairie Conference crossover game.

[ Photos: Oswego vs. Plainfield South baseball ]

“It was a team effort all the way around,” said Hernandez, a junior, who was 2 for 4 and also scored two runs. “I felt like as a team we all came together and fought back and made sure Bryson [Mello] had the run support.”

Mello overcame a rocky first inning, allowing his first earned run of the young season, to pitch into the sixth inning. Andrew Hart recorded the final six outs.

Joel Johnson, Ethan Valles and Tyler Stack singled to start the Oswego half of the fourth with Plainfield South leading 4-3. That brought up Hernandez, who lined a single to right to bring home the tying and go-ahead runs. Troy Vosburgh followed with his second RBI single of the game, and two more runs scored on a sacrifice fly and error.

“Just pass the bat onto the next guys, save outs, get extra base hits, go deep into counts,” Hernandez said. “I felt like as a team we did a good job of that.”

The game swung on events of both sides of the fourth inning.

Evan Chance, Blake Phommachannom and Ryan Strenzo singled to start Plainfield South’s top of the fourth, with Strenzo squeezing in a run for a 4-3 Cougars lead.

But Mello, a junior lefty, came back to strike out the next three batters to minimize the damage and set the stage for Oswego’s big inning.

“We switched approaches, we started to mix in curveballs and changeups to each batter, and then we went fastball up high,” said Mello, who had three of his four strikeouts in the inning. “When we got to two strikes, we got them swinging and missing on the curveball.”

Plainfield South (2-2) lamented missed opportunities in multiple innings.

The Cougars had their first three batters reach in the first, and Phommachannom doubled in a run for a 3-0 lead. But they stranded two runners, and Oswego (5-4) tied it at 3-3 in the third on Will Pavlick’s looping RBI liner past a diving outfielder.

Trailing 8-4, Plainfield South saw its first four batters in the sixth reach. Zachary Korol singled in a run, and the second scored on an RBI groundout. But Hart came back to get the third out with the tying runs on base.

“We gave up some opportunities early, didn’t put the bat on the ball in key situations,” Cougars coach Phil Bodine said. “We didn’t get a safety squeeze down to score another run, and that’s huge. We score some of the runs we stranded and just put the bat on the ball, it’s a different game.”

The Cougars needed the extra run support with ace Matt Kelliher not as sharp as Bodine is accustomed to seeing. Kelliher did not make it through the fourth.

“He couldn’t get ahead of batters, he couldn’t throw his offspeed pitches for strikes, and you can’t just throw a fastball against any team,” Bodine said. “It really felt like even ahead 3-0 we were still struggling because my pitcher wasn’t throwing well at all. We just have to keep getting better. We’re a young team.”

So is Oswego, with just two full-time players – Johnson and Stack – back from a team that in 2021 won the program’s first conference title since 2003.

Johnson reached base three times and scored two runs. Valles, Hernandez, Vosburgh and Duffin each had two of Oswego’s 13 hits.

“We’ve been looking for some offense, and we finally put some runs on the board, and that helps our pitching staff,” Oswego coach Joe Giarrante said. “Bryson didn’t have his best stuff, but he battled and gave us innings. It’s fun. They’re such a young group and they have a lot to learn, but they go out and compete every day. That’s all we can ask for.”