Baseball: Ethan Storm, Sycamore blank Ottawa to stay atop I-8 standings

OTTAWA – Sycamore pitcher Ethan Storm shrugged his shoulders in a bit of frustration after a third straight fastball sailed high, allowing an Ottawa base runner to reach with a walk in the second inning.

However, that trio of pitches was just a blip on the radar of how the rest of Wednesday’s Interstate 8 Conference contest against the Pirates went for the hard-throwing right-hander.

Storm finished the complete-game effort, allowing only four hits and that one walk while striking out 12 to help the Spartans (16-5, 10-2 I-8) keep hold of a one-game lead in the league standings over La Salle-Peru with a 5-0 victory at King Field.

“I felt like both my fastball and offspeed pitches were working well together,” said Storm, who threw 65 of his 98 pitches for strikes. “I had a couple of times today where my fastball was running high, but I knew I could come back to my curveball and it was going to be there. For most of the season, my fastball has been solid, and I’ve been able to locate it very well, but today I felt I had the same command with curve.

“[The conference race] has been a focus of ours, of course, but we also know we have to take care of what we have control of. We have to treat everything the same, because anything can happen.”

“That’s what we’ve come to expect from Ethan. I feel bad for saying that, but he does all the things we ask of him,” Sycamore coach Jason Cavanaugh said. “He fields his position, he throws strikes and does not walk hitters. He pitched a really solid game for us today, and our defense behind him was about as solid as it gets.”

Sycamore backed Storm with some timely hitting, starting in the top of the first when Tommy Townsend singled with two outs off Ottawa starting and losing pitcher Rylan Dorsey (6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3 K) and scored when Jimmy Amptmann followed with a two-strike, ringing double to right-center.

The visitors were held in check by Dorsey until the sixth. Townsend, who finished 3 for 3, walked, moved to second on a Pirates error and scored when a sacrifice bunt by Joey Puleo was thrown away. Storm helped himself with a sacrifice fly to score Amptmann before Byron Blaise lined a two-out, opposite-field single to make it 4-0.

“I don’t think we as a group swung the bats exceptionally well today with too many easy outs, too many weak fly balls to the opposite field,” Cavanaugh said. “But we did come up with some timely hits when we needed them, especially in the sixth inning when we were able to add on.”

Sycamore added a run in the seventh off Pirates reliever Justus Mason, as Kiefer Tarnoki poked a leadoff single, moved to second on a groundout, to third on a wild pitch and scored on an RBI base hit by Townsend.

Storm, who didn’t allow an Ottawa runner to reach third, allowed hits by Dorsey and Payton Knoll with two outs in the seventh but closed the game by inducing a ground ball to third.

“I thought for the most part Rylan commanded the strike zone and really did a good job of mixing up his pitches,” said Ottawa coach Tyler Wargo, his team now 12-8 and 6-6. “He did a great job and really kept us in the game. Of the three phases of the game, I feel our pitching has been above average this season, it’s just we are lacking in the other two areas right now. We’ll get that cleaned up and keep working to get better.

“When you only get a handful of base runners in a game, you have to capitalize any chance you can get. We are a team that has to string hits together to score runs for the most part, and against a kid like Storm, that’s going to be a tough.

“We just weren’t able to get to him today.”

Next up: Ottawa is scheduled to travel to play Mendota on Thursday, while Sycamore hosts Genoa-Kingston on Friday.