Baseball: Seneca holds off Henry-Senachwine for Tri-County Conference win

SENECA – Achieving perfection is an uncommon occurrence in baseball, and now Matt Cruise and the Seneca baseball team know why.

Cruise was “pitcher perfect” through the first four innings in Tuesday’s Tri-County Conference meeting against Henry-Senachwine and still had a no-hitter going over five. However, in the sixth the roof fell in, and he not only lost the gem but almost lost the game.

That’s where solid relief pitching by Paxton Giertz – helped along by an outstanding defensive play by first baseman Casey Clennon – finally closed out the Mallards and preserved a wild 6-5 Irish victory.

Seneca, now 5-1 and 3-0 in the TCC, scored twice in the fourth inning to break up a mound duel between Cruise and Henry’s Lance Kiesewetter, then added what proved to be four vital insurance runs in the fifth before hanging on for the win.

The Mallards fell to 5-4, 1-2.

“Thankfully we were able to string some hits together when we needed them,” Seneca coach Tim Brungard said. “Matt had his good stuff for the first five innings, controlling the game, pitching fast and effective and getting all his pitches over for strikes, but then the sixth inning happened, and he wore down, started walking guys, and we kicked the ball a little bit behind him. Kudos to Henry for staying in the game. They never thought they were out of it, and what looked like a ballgame that was over wasn’t over yet.

“But Paxton did a good job getting us out of the jam … and Casey catching that foul ball in the seventh when they had the tying run on, if that drops it’s new life, and who knows what happens. That was big.”

The Irish got a double from Cruise, a run-scoring double by Bryce Roe and an RBI single by Clennon to take a 2-0 lead in the third.

The hosts’ rally in the fifth started with one-out walks to Giertz and Cruise, chasing the tiring Kiesewetter. Holdyn Carr took the mound and allowed an RBI single to Tyler Sulzberger, a run-scoring wild pitch and consecutive walks to Roe, Clennon and Dalton Degrush to force in another run. Austin Aldridge plated the fourth run with a grounder to second for a 6-0 Seneca lead.

That appeared to be plenty the way Cruise was cruising along, the senior striking out eight of 10 batters he faced from the last out of the first through the three-strikeout fourth frame. He lost the perfect game with a leadoff walk to Kiesewetter in the fifth, but fanned two more to get to the sixth.

There, Henry-Senachwine’s PJ Ehrat led off the sixth by slapping a grounder off the third-base bag, earning his team’s first hit of the day. A walk to Colton Williams, an Eric Garrison grounder that went for an error to score Ehrat and Mason Johnson getting hit by a pitch loaded the bases for Kiesewetter, whose weak grounder got past the defense for a two-run miscue.

A wild pitch scored another before a bloop single to right by Carr pulled HSHS within one.

That brought on Giertz, who in the seventh issued a one-out walk to Williams but got out of it when Glennon made a running, over-the-shoulder catch of a foul ball by Garrison for the key second out.

“We don’t quit, and that’s something we’ve done well all year,” Mallards coach Matt Emmons said. “We were down 5-0 to Roanoke too and got back to within 5-4, but lost. It would have been nice to finish one of these. We have a lot of seniors, and this group is never out of a game. We get a hit, then a walk, and suddenly things snowball for us.

“What Mallards baseball is all about is that we hate walks, we hate making errors, and we don’t like giving away at-bats. Lance battled and gave us a chance to win ... we just need to play better earlier in the game.”