OTTAWA – During the past three games, the Ottawa baseball team scored 30 runs.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, they allowed 37 throughout a trio of close but frustrating losses.

Ottawa was in need of a stopper on the mound to halt its mini skid, and Payton Knoll proved to be that man.

The senior right-hander threw six innings, allowing four earned runs and nine hits with 10 strikeouts and two walks as the Pirates bounced back by besting Interstate 8 Conference foe Sandwich 11-5 on Wednesday at King Field.

“Even though we’ve scored a lot of runs over the past few games, I don’t think we had much energy, and I think we changed that today,” Knoll said. “Give credit to my teammates for hitting well again, and I felt my changeup was working good along with getting some pitches for strikes on the corners when I needed to. I just wanted to step up against Sandwich and get us back on track.”

Knoll upped his pitching record to 4-2, and the Pirates moved to 10-8 overall and 3-4 in league play. He also added a run-scoring single to the cause, and fellow senior Rylan Dorsey registered two hits and four RBIs.

“We’re really hitting the ball great right now, but in the last three games before today we just couldn’t turn all that offense into wins,” Ottawa coach Tyler Wargo said. “Payton was solid by attacking the ball in the zone and getting us back in the win column against a Sandwich team that hit the ball well, so credit to them for battling hard.”

Sandwich (7-7, 1-5 I-8) received a solid pitching performance from Hunter Pavia (2-2). He added two hits along with a pair of hits from Chance Lange and Tyler Lissman.

But the Indians just couldn’t get to Knoll enough to keep up with the Ottawa bats that recorded 13 hits on the day.

“I thought Hunter pitched well, but we made some mistakes behind him that cost us against a very good hitting team,” Sandwich coach Jason VanPelt said. “[Knoll] did a great job of throwing strikes, and they’re a solid ballclub. But we’ll look forward to playing them again on Friday with hopefully a different outcome for us.”

Things didn’t start off well for the Pirates as they committed three errors and yielded an unearned run as the Indians went ahead 1-0 in the top of the first inning on Pavia’s RBI single that plated Lange.

Ottawa countered with two of its own runs in the bottom of the frame after Knoll and Dorsey’s RBI base knocks put the Pirates ahead to stay ahead at 2-1.

Ottawa added a run in the bottom of the of the second courtesy of a run-scoring single off the bat of Julian Alexander to up its lead to 3-1.

Pavia blasted an RBI double in the top of the third to cut the Indians’ deficit to 3-2 before the Pirates plated four runs in the home half of the fourth. The big blow came off the bat of Dorsey, who hit a two-run triple to the fence in left-center field that put Ottawa up 7-2.

“[Dorsey] has really been driving the ball, splitting gaps, and that was huge to get two runs on one swing,” Wargo said. “But Sandwich wasn’t done, and we had more work to do.”

The Indians cut the deficit to 7-4 in the top of the fifth after an RBI double from Lange and a run-scoring single off the bat of Taylor Adams.

But the Pirates plated another four runs in the bottom of the fifth on RBIs from Dorsey, Branden Aguirre and Ryan Chamberlain that helped increase the Ottawa lead to 11-4.

Sandwich tacked on another run in the top of the sixth on Lissman’s infield single.

But that’s all the Indians managed as Daniel Bruner came on in relief of Knoll in the top of the seventh and sat down Sandwich in order to end the contest.