NEW PALESTINE — It took until nearly 11 p.m. for the final result, but for New Palestine, the long wait was worth it Tuesday night.
A scheduled 6 p.m. start time for the Hoosier Heritage Conference and Hancock County baseball matchup between the Dragons and Greenfield-Central was pushed back to 7 p.m. and later 8 p.m. due to rain.
And for New Palestine, there was waiting to be had during the game too.
Trailing 4-2 heading to the bottom of the sixth, the Dragons offense exploded for eight runs to come from behind and defeat the Cougars 10-4 at New Palestine High School.
The win moved the Dragons (11-2, 5-2) into a first-place tie with the Cougars (7-4, 5-2) in the HHC.
“They hit us a couple of times, but didn’t knock us out and we were opportunistic. Rigg [Mahurin] got a big hit to start things off in the sixth inning and got us going. We played some small ball and then Jackson [Kamp] got the big hit for us,” New Palestine head coach Shawn Lyons said. “Greenfield’s at-bats were good, they’re well coached, and they’re enthusiastic. You could see that and it was just a good ballgame.”
Held to just one hit through the first five innings, the Dragons offense found life in the sixth.
Sparked by a Mahurin leadoff-triple, the Dragons sent 11 batters to the plate and scored eight runs.
With his pitch count over 100, Greenfield-Central head coach Mitch Gibson pulled starting pitcher Landon Brooks after the first two batters in the inning reached base. After Mahurin’s triple, Brooks walked Wyatt Matheis, forcing Gibson to go to senior Kaden Snodgrass to try to get out of the jam.
“Brooks was getting up there in pitch count. I hate throwing him over 100, but he was grooving and grinding and he felt good. If there’s anybody that I’d let go over 100, it’s him. At the 110 mark I made the change because I think that’s the right thing to do, and I’ll go to the grave thinking I made the right decision,” Gibson said. “We took our chance with Snodgrass who had done great for us out of the pen all season. We just had a couple of balls hit to us that we didn’t execute plays. We put ourselves in a spot to get beat.”
Successful small ball played by the Dragons led to the first tie since the third inning.
Henry Thorpe reached on a bunt and brought in the first run of the inning, and an Adam Rickey bloop single to right field tied it up at 4-4.
Back-to-back errors by the Cougars on ground balls brought in two more runs and kept the bases loaded for Jackson Kamp to put the exclamation point on the inning.
He broke the game wide open with a grand slam to left field.
“That inning right there is what no coach wants to go through,” Gibson said. “We gave ourselves a really good chance to win going into that inning.”
As the Dragons offense got stronger as the game went on, so did their starting pitcher.
After being tagged for runs in the first, third, and fourth innings, Michael Thorpe was lights out over the final three innings for the Dragons.
In the fourth, G-C’s Kirk Knecht walked to start the inning, stole second base, and later came around to score on a Brooks single, and after back-to-back strikeouts by Thorpe, Jacob Welch doubled to left field to bring in the Cougars second run of the inning, putting them ahead 4-2.
With a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, Thorpe’s night looked to be all but over, but after getting Brady Johnson to fly out to end the inning, the Dragons ace remained on the mound and threw his three best innings of the game.
In the fifth and sixth he sent the Cougars down in order, and in the seventh, pitching with a lead for the first time all night, he retired the side once again to close out the game and his second consecutive complete game against Greenfield-Central.
“I told him your best two innings were the last two you threw. That’s where his conditioning pays off. His velocity wasn’t dipping and I think he threw 107 pitches,” Lyons said. “He didn’t have any stress the last few innings and in pitching, the stress goes along with pitching. If you get stressed, along with the pitch count, that adds up. He said he was good to go and after the big inning we wanted to go back to him.”
Last year, Thorpe allowed just one run and struck out nine in a 2-1 complete-game win over the Cougars. This time around, he allowed four runs on five hits and struck out 11.
“Offensively, it’s hard to do things when you’ve got 11 Ks against you. Thorpe threw a heck of a game. We gave ourselves a chance with five hits, but when you strike out 11 times it’s hard,” Gibson said. “Going into the second inning we didn’t score and we needed to continue to score early and often. Whether that was one run at a time, we needed to score. We left some runners stranded too and that can’t happen. Our approach with two strikes has been a lot better, but tonight it took a bit of a step back. We did have some guys grind some at-bats and drove his pitch count up but he just continued to shut us down.”
For G-C, Brooks held the Dragons to two hits over five innings of work, allowed two earned runs, walked five, and struck out seven.
“Brooks did a good job of dominating us early,” Lyons said. “He had really good command, and for some reason, our guys took a lot of first-pitch fastballs.”
The Cougars jumped out to the early lead with a run in the first. After a leadoff triple by Welch, an infield single by Johnson brought in the first run of the game.
A Kamp ground ball to score Nic Deering answered things for the Dragons in the bottom half of the frame.
In the third, the teams traded runs again.
Set up by a Johnson double down the leftfield line, a Zander Cobb ground ball brought Elvin Sanchez home for the Cougars run, and in the bottom of the inning a pair of G-C errors allowed Deering to come around and score his second run of the game for the Dragons.
“You’ve got to flush this one from memory. We spend a lot of time talking with kids individually after the game to try and be the best coaches we possibly can to our players. We talk about what we did right, wrong, and what we can do better,” Gibson said. “We have a really good baseball team, where we need to be better is just understanding when we can’t afford to make mistakes.”
The two teams will meet again Wednesday to wrap up the series at Greenfield-Central beginning at 6 p.m.
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New Palestine 10, Greenfield-Central 4
Greenfield-Central (7-4, 5-2);101;200;0;—;4;5;4
New Palestine (11-2, 5-2);101;008;x;—;10;5;0
Landon Brooks, Kaden Snodgrass (6), Liam Flanagan (6) and Zander Cobb; Michael Thorpe and Wyatt Matheis. 2B: G-C – Brady Johnson, Jacob Welch. 3B: G-C – Welch. NP – Rigg Mahurin. HR: NP – Jackson Kamp (2). WP: Thorpe (3-0). LP: Snodgrass (0-1).
