When the baseball season started, Isaac Harris was not in Joliet West’s plans as a hitter.

That’s because Harris, a senior, plans to pitch in college. But, the Tigers have needed him to take on a role in the outfield, so that is where he has been playing.

West coach John Karczewski moved Harris from ninth in the order to second for Thursday’s game against Plainfield Central.

It worked to perfection, as Harris was 3 for 3 with a double, three RBIs and a sacrifice bunt as West salvaged the third of the three-game Southwest Prairie Conference series with an 11-0 win over the Wildcats after dropping the first two games earlier in the week.

Harris made his presence felt early and often. After Daniel Lukancic (3 for 4, 2 doubles) led off the game with a double to center, Harris singled sharply to right with Lukancic stopping at third. Harris promptly stole second before Sean Hogan drove in both runners with a single through the middle.

Henry Young followed with a single, the fourth straight hit to open the game for the Tigers. Plainfield Central’s Finn Gregoire then got a strikeout and a short fly out to left before Michael Murphy hit a fly to left that was dropped, allowing both courtesy runner Travis Skole and Young to score.

“We knew we had to put those other two losses in the series behind us,” Harris said. “We faced that adversity and now we have stayed in the conference race. We can only worry about the games we are playing.

“At the start of the year, I was in the nine hole and I got pretty comfortable there. Today was the first time I have hit second. My job there is pretty much the same as No. 9. Advance runners when I can, get on base when I can. The good thing is that with Daniel hitting in front of me, he is almost always on base so I will get more RBI chances. The key for us right now is execution.”

While the Tigers (20-10-1, 12-4) were busy executing on offense and scoring in four of their five at-bats, winning pitcher Keegan Schwarting was executing on the mound. The junior righty allowed just one hit, a leadoff single by Colin Coberly in the fourth inning, while striking out four and walking three.

“When Keegan is on the mound, we feel pretty good about getting him the lead,” Harris said. “He does a great job of pounding the strike zone and keeping the fielders on their toes. He also works quick, so when we score, he gets us back in the dugout to hit again as fast as possible.”

Schwarting needed just seven pitches to get the Tigers back into the dugout in the bottom of the first, and they rewarded him with another run.

With one out, Lukancic again doubled to center and Harris followed with a double to left that scored him for a 5-0 lead. After not scoring in the third, the Tigers got back to business in the fourth. Marco Rodriguez, Jr. led off with a single down the third-base line and Lunakcic singled.

Harris then bunted the runners to second and third before a dropped popup allowed Rodriguez to score. An out later, Brayden Myers doubled to left to score both Lunakcic and Skole, who was running for Hogan, who hit the dropped popup, to put West ahead 8-0.

The Tigers put the game away in the top of the fifth. Michael Murphy led off with a single and a wild pitch sent him to second before Rodriguez singled to right to bring him home. Rodriguez then stole second and went to third on a wild pitch before Harris singled up the middle to score him. Harris then stole second, went to third on a wild pitch and scored when the throw to third went into left field.

“The guys were focused today,” Karczewski said. “After losing the first two games of the series, this was a character-building type of game, and they responded. We still have a chance at the conference title. We’ll need help, but we need to take care of our business.

“What a lot of people don’t know about Isaac Harris is that he hadn’t swung a bat since eighth grade before this year. He’s going to college to pitch, but we had some injuries in the outfield and I asked him to play out there. He just wants to do whatever the team needs him to do for it to win. He has such a good attitude and has worked hard at the mental game. We also swung the bat well from top to bottom today and Keegan threw the ball well.”

Plainfield Central (19-8-1, 12-3) still leads the Southwest Prairie Blue, a fact not lost on coach Robert Keane despite Thursday’s outcome.

“We took two out of three in the series, so we hold the tiebreaker over West if it comes to that,” he said. “We have a big series to end the regular season against Plainfield East next week. We’re still playing well and doing good things, but today we had a lot of phases that we didn’t excel at.

“Joliet West is a good team and this was a good series between two good high school teams. One thing about West is that if you make a mistake, they will capitalize on it, like they did when we made mistakes today. That’s baseball. Sometimes it’s your day and sometimes it’s not. Today wasn’t our day, but the guys will respond. There’s still a lot of baseball to be played.”