Baseball: Newman rallies, then pulls away to top Kewanee

STERLING – It took a few innings, but the Newman Comets finally got their bats going Thursday afternoon against Kewanee.

The Comets rallied from an early deficit to take the lead with a big fifth inning, and went on to defeat the visiting Boilermakers 7-3 in a Three Rivers East game.

“We’ve been practicing all week on being aggressive. It’s been a big thing to not strike out, but to put the ball in play and make the other team make the plays. That’s been our mentality so far this season,” left fielder Joe Oswalt said. “We didn’t find any holes the first few innings; almost every single ball that we hit went to one of their fielders. But we stuck with it, and later in the game we started finding holes, getting on base, and stringing hits together.”

Newman (4-2, 2-0 TRAC East) loaded the bases with nobody out in the fourth inning and got RBI grounders from Garet Wolfe and Isaiah Williams to erase a 2-0 deficit. Then, with the top of the order leading off the fifth, the Comets took control.

Garret Matznick was hit by a pitch, then stole second and went to third on a wild pitch. Kyle Wolfe beat out an infield single up the middle to drive in Matznick and give Newman the lead. Brendan Tunink blooped a single to short left field, then he and Wolfe tagged up on Jaesen Johns’ deep flyout to left-center. Nolan Britt was then hit by a pitch for the second straight inning to load the bases with one out.

Garet Wolfe came through with a sacrifice fly to center field to drive in Kyle Wolfe, then Williams hit a sharp grounder to third. The Kewanee third baseman tried to tag Tunink as he ran past and missed, and by then the throw to first was too late to get Williams, again loading the bases.

Oswalt followed with a sharp single up the middle on the first pitch he saw, driving in Tunink and Britt for a 6-2 lead.

“Honestly, it was just getting us fired up in the dugout. Our first couple games, we weren’t really fired up, but now we’re starting to get going and we’re trying to be aggressive right off the bat,” Tunink said. “We want to put the ball in play because we know they’re going to get through the defense sometime, so we’re just trying to make contact.”

Kewanee (0-6, 0-2) scored an unearned run in the top of the sixth off reliever Garet Wolfe, but Newman got that run right back in the bottom of the inning when Tunink crushed an 0-1 pitch well past the left-field fence for a home run.

It was the fourth straight game where the Notre Dame commit has homered.

“I’m pretty locked in. I’m feeling pretty good right now,” he said with a huge smile.

Garet Wolfe then closed out the game, pitching around a two-out single in the top of the seventh. He allowed one unearned run and one hit in two innings of relief, striking out two and walking two.

After managing only Johns’ double through the first three innings, the Comets’ aggressive approach at the plate finally paid off over their last three half-innings at the plate. Tunink led the way with three hits and three runs scored, while Oswalt had a pair of hits and drove in two runs.

The top eight spots in the lineup either had a hit, got on base, or drove in runs for Newman.

“We’re starting to feel confident all through the lineup,” Tunink said. “Especially at the bottom of the order, we didn’t know what to expect from them at the start of the season, but this week they’ve really shown their potential and what they can do, hitting the ball and driving in runs.”

The Boilermakers tagged Newman starter Kyle Wolfe for back-to-back hits to start the game, but he limited the damage to one run on a one-out sacrifice fly by Jackson Hawkins, then his defense helped him the next two innings.

In the second, a two-out error at shortstop turned into the third out at home plate when Williams collected the low throw at first base and threw out a Kewanee runner trying to score from second on the play.

In the third inning, a one-out single and error in right field put Andrew Osborne on second base, then a dropped fly ball in right put runners on second and third. Clark Heeren chopped a single off the third baseman’s glove to drive in Osborne for a 2-0 lead, but when Hawkins tried to score on the play, he was thrown out at the plate by Newman shortstop Nolan Britt after he corralled the deflection.

“Something we’ve been harping on is just putting the baseball in play and putting pressure on the defense and making them make outs,” Kewanee coach John Moraski said. “Our first five games before tonight, over half of our outs were strikeouts. So I think we’re trending the right direction.

“We’ve got a couple of things to shore up defensively; I thought we let our pitchers down in a couple instances, and they made us pay – which is what happens when you play good teams.”

Osborne and Heeren each had a pair of singles for Kewanee, and Cruz Paredes added a sacrifice fly in the sixth.

Paredes took the loss on the mound for the Boilers, allowing six runs and five hits in 4 1/3 innings, with two strikeouts, one walk and four hit batsmen. James Roginski allowed three hits, including Tunink’s solo homer, in 1 2/3 innings, striking out one without a walk.

Kyle Wolfe (1-1) finished with six strikeouts and two walks in five innings pitched, allowing two runs (one earned) and six hits. But both runs and five of those hits came in the first three innings, as he gave up just a hit and a walk in his final two innings on the mound.

“I just relaxed the nerves. I thought coming out I didn’t have my best stuff, and they scored a couple runs early and it kind of got in my head, so I came out there in the fourth and tried relaxing and just did what I know how to do,” Kyle Wolfe said. “As a pitcher, I’m just trying to put my team in a position where we can win, and when we get run support like that, it makes my job so much easier.”