FORTVILLE — It was typical April Hoosier Heritage Conference baseball on Wednesday night at Mt. Vernon High School.
Cold weather, a pitcher’s duel, and no love lost between two conference rivals.
Tied for third place in the HHC entering the night, Mt. Vernon (8-4, 5-2) walked it off in the bottom of the seventh to defeat Pendleton Heights 2-1 (9-5, 4-3) and move into second place in the conference.
After a sweep of Greenfield-Central, New Palestine holds the top spot at 6-2.
With the Marauders’ Tuesday game against the Arabians postponed to Thursday due to weather, they’ll have a chance to move into a first-place tie with a win.
“I’m sitting at home when everybody else was rained out last night watching the New Pal and Greenfield game on GameChanger. We’ve got the top four teams playing this week. It’s fun,” Mt. Vernon head coach Brad King said. “We talked to the guys and knew Pendleton was right there too. Our goal this week was to knock them out and then take care of next week and control our own destiny.”
Pendleton Heights led 1-0 through five innings of play behind the arm of Jacob Garner. Over the first five innings, the Marauders had just two hits.
DJ Scheumann singled in the first and stole second before being stranded. In the fifth, a pair of walks and a Gage Blanchard single loaded the bases with one out, but a force out at home and a ground out to second ended the Marauders threat.
In the sixth, the offense finally broke through with the help of Pendleton Heights mistakes. Mason Meyer singled and later advanced to third on an errant pickoff attempt before scoring on another Arabians error. With the infield playing in, a ground ball to the second baseman off of the bat of Nick Heitman was misplayed allowing Meyer to score.
An inning later, the winning run crossed the plate in similar fashion. Will Jacobs singled to lead off the frame and scored on a Hayden Ford sacrifice bunt. After getting the out at first, the Arabians tried to go across the diamond to catch Jacobs running to third but the throw was wild.
“I had just made a comment to my assistant coaches that I liked the spot we were in with seven, eight and nine (hitters scheduled to bat). Most coaches wouldn’t say that, but Will Jacobs, Hayden Ford and Gage Blanchard have done an outstanding job this year. At that moment we wanted to be fired up but you still have to be composed. I thought our bench did a great job during Will’s at-bat. They were in it and engaged and that’s all you want in baseball. That was a fun game,” King said.
“We got everybody together before we went to the plate and I told Hayden as soon as Will gets on base you have to do the job here. I didn’t have to have that conversation with him, he knew, and he couldn’t have rolled it out there any better. When we saw their third baseman crashing in, we were going to be aggressive. Will runs the bases well, and if he gets out there everybody can blame me, but we were going to be aggressive. Any time you can apply pressure to 16 to 18-year-olds, stuff like that can happen.”
To get to that spot, the Marauders had adversity to deal with in the top half of the seventh.
Starting pitcher Cam Sullivan hit Pendleton Heights’ Clint Miller with a pitch to start the inning and then walked the next batter. Miller was caught stealing by Grant Payson for the first out of the inning, but with a 2-2 count on Bo Surface, Sullivan was ejected from the game.
With the Arabians crowding the plate, Sullivan threw back-to-back pitches over the head of Surface that allowed the runner on base to advance to third, and prompted the ump to remove Sullivan from the game.
“Cam’s a competitor. He’s a smart kid but he’s a competitor,” King said. “There was some stuff being said and he was frustrated with that but he stayed composed.”
With the go-ahead run on third, Andrew Boldt came into the game and fired up the Marauders bench and fans with two straight outs. He got the last strike on Surface and got Colin Axel-Adams to pop out to third.
“What we talked about there was to bring Boldt in. Andrew has done a great job for us this year. We talked to everybody on the mound and said, ‘You’ve got to let that go, Andrew. You’ve got to throw strikes and attack, and the infield you have to cut the guy down at the plate.’ Once we got the second out we moved everybody back to normal defense,” King said. “At the beginning of the season, we talked to Drew about his role. He’s going to be that closer guy and he has to embrace it because he’s going to be put into tough spots. He’s done a fantastic job. I thought he was very composed and threw some great sliders to get the outs.”
Up until his departure, Sullivan, a Notre Dame signee, was as good as expected. He held a Pendleton Heights offense that entered the night averaging nearly eight runs a game to one unearned run. He allowed just two hits, three free passes, and struck out 12.
The lone run allowed came in the second inning on a Mt. Vernon fielding error.
“His [Sullivan] stuff looked good. His fastball was good, he had movement and his changeup looked really good,” King said. “Pendleton is a really good hitting team, so to hold them to one unearned run is a very good outing.”
The Marauders travel to Pendleton Heights Thursday to wrap up the series with first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m.
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Mt. Vernon 2, Pendleton Heights 1
Pendleton Heights (9-5, 4-3);010;000;0;—;1;2;4
Mt. Vernon (8-4, 5-2);000;001;1;—;2;4;1
Jacob Garner and Brayden Stevenson; Cam Sullivan, Andrew Boldt (7) and Grant Payson. WP: Boldt (2-1). LP: Garner (2-2)
