NEW PALESTINE — After taking an early 1-0 lead on Monday, things went downhill quick for the New Palestine baseball team.
The Dragons stranded three runners on base in the first inning — something that would become a recurring theme — then watched the visiting Whiteland Warriors take a 4-1 lead in the top of the second.
The Warriors offense took advantage of New Palestine mistakes to add another six runs in the fourth inning, pulling away for an 11-2 road win.
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“We were going to try to win that game 6-4, 5-3 or something, but then we gave them the big inning, the air kind of went out of our sail and it went downhill from there,” New Palestine coach Shawn Lyons said. “You can’t play baseball against — that team’s got 13 seniors, they’ve pointed to this year as their year — and when you play the kind of baseball you play tonight against a good team, the outcome is going to be like it was tonight.”
After New Palestine got on the board in the opening frame with singles from Trevor Rush and Jack Walker — Rush scored from first on a fielding error in center field — Whiteland pitcher Riley McMahon got out of a bases loaded jam to contain the damage and keep it just a 1-0 deficit.
The hosts stranded 11 runners in the game, as McMahon continually found ways to get out of jams and end innings despite allowing eight hits. The Dragons added a ninth hit in the seventh inning off a relief pitcher but couldn’t seem to string together big hits.
“It’s not what you hit, it’s when you hit,” Lyons said. “We had a runner on third base with one out in the first and second innings and didn’t score. We could have been up, that first inning could have been 4-0 or 5-0 if we got a big hit. We preach that it’s not what, it’s when, and we didn’t get the job done tonight.”
New Palestine was still in the game after three innings, but a pair of Dragons mistakes loaded the bases with nobody out in the fourth and helped lead to a blowout defeat.
After a leadoff single, a fielding error on a ground ball was followed by a sacrifice bunt attempt that turned into an infield single thanks to another fielding miscue.
The Warriors followed with an RBI single, a sacrifice fly, an RBI double and a two-RBI single to push the lead to nine.
“It’s unacceptable — a tight ball game, we boot a ball, we don’t go to the right base on a bunt coverage, a bloop, another bloop and all of a sudden it blows open,” Lyons said. “When you play a good ball team, you can’t do that.”
The offense was clicking for Whiteland all night, with the 11 runs coming on 14 hits. Five Whiteland batters had at least two hits, while Rush was the only Dragon with multiple hits, a pair of singles.
Eric Roudebush had New Palestine’s lone RBI, a groundout that scored Rush in the fifth inning.
The Dragons have little time to rebound from the home defeat, as they play Cathedral, the team that eliminated them from the 2018 tournament, tonight.
They have a lot of things to clean up, their coach said.
“I didn’t like what I saw in terms of adversity hitting our guys and how they responded to that adversity,” Lyons said. “You can tell a lot about people when adversity hits, and it can go two ways. What I saw tonight, they went the wrong way. We’re going to have to have a little powwow about that. That will not be tolerated in my program.”
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Whiteland 11, New Palestine 2
WL (6-3);040;600;1;—;11;14;2
NP (4-5);100;010;0;—;2;9;3
WP: Riley McMahon (2-0). LP: Grant Hickman (1-1).
2B: Samuel Pohl, Tyler Wick, Iyan Pelfree (W). RBI: Eric Roudebush (NP); Pohl 2, Ryan Glithero 2, Alexander Reed 2, Luke Helton, Trevor Spilker, Pelfree, Wick (W).
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