As doses of hard reality go, what Emporia High’s baseball team had to gulp down on Friday was a jagged-edged horse pill.
The 6-2 start the Spartans had enjoyed, which included a marquee win at Hayden, seemed a distant memory during Friday’s doubleheader at Soden’s Grove. Shawnee Heights, one of the Centennial League’s top teams, belted the Spartans from first inning to last, posting an 11-5 victory in Game One and roughing them up even worse in Game Two, scoring six runs in the seventh for a 17-2 final. The results were so dismal that coach Mike Strickland, who usually takes his time addressing his team following a doubleheader, dismissed the Spartans quickly after Game Two.
“I think the toughest thing for me is to watch (us not) play to our ability,” Strickland said. “... And we don’t take the approach like we should right now, and that shows against a good team. A good team’s gonna... show our errors.”
Officially, the Spartans (6-4) didn’t make that many errors: just three in each game. Unofficially, there were missed opportunities to make plays, mistake pitches and displays of simple superiority by Shawnee Heights.
Emporia completely fell apart during the T-Birds’ seven-run third inning in Game Two, which featured three pitching changes, five walks, an error and a mental mistake — and just three Heights hits. Remington Pinick relieved struggling EHS starting pitcher Gary Rivera and issued three walks before being pulled in favor of Brian Keisler. Keisler surrendered a two-run single and a walk before Strickland went to the bullpen again, bringing in Brett Lechien. Lechien struck out Austin Wegener before Riley Price reached on an error.
With men on first and third and two out, Heights three-hole hitter Lance Barkley grounded a ball to third baseman Matt Fry. Fry, mistakenly thinking there was a force play at third base, ran to the bag to tag it, allowing the runners to advance and the seventh and final run of the inning to score, making it 9-0 Heights.
That inning may have been the epitome of Emporia’s night. But another appropriately agonizing turn of events was the fact that one of the Spartans’ few highlights — their first home run of the season — ended up extending the game, which resulted in more pain.
After Shawnee Heights brought home a run on a double by Josh Vossen in the top of the fifth to make the score 11-0, Emporia was on the verge of being run-ruled. But in the bottom of the inning, second baseman Derek Nielsen went down to get a low pitch and smashed it over the left-field wall and off the scoreboard to bring home two runs. The homer got the crowd going, but without the runs resulting from it, one more painful big inning for Heights — the six-run seventh that included four hits, two errors and a strike-three passed ball — wouldn’t have occurred.
“When you’re playing a good team like Shawnee Heights — any team — you can’t give up five, six outs in an inning,” Strickland said. “And that’s exactly what we did tonight. We had a ton of errors tonight, and hitting-wise, we just don’t make adjustments. And then we let the score get out of hand, and to be honest with you, we don’t continue to play hard.”
The Spartans managed just seven hits in Game One, losing 11-5. The T-Birds (8-3) touched starter Jacob Loucks for two homers and three runs in the first, with Riley Price and Lance Barkley both going deep. Loucks pitched 3 1/3 innings.
“We’re leaving balls up in the zone right now, and they capitalize on bad pitches, and they hit it a long ways tonight,” Strickland said.
Brian Keisler and Fry each went 2-for-3 in Game One, and Fry added a walk and a stolen base. The Spartans did put together a three-run fifth inning, with Rodriguez, Nielsen and Keisler scoring and Keisler notching an RBI single.
Emporia will try to rebound on Tuesday when it travels to Seaman (10-1), which split a doubleheader with Hayden on Friday.
Friday at Soden’s Grove
Game One
Emporia 011 030 0 — 5 7 3
Shawnee Heights 321 120 2 — 11 12 2
WP — Gauntt. LP — Loucks.
2B — SH: Tibbs. HR — SH: Price, Barkley.
Game Two
Emporia 000 020 0 — 2 3 3
Shawnee Heights 027 110 6 — 17 16 0
WP — Flanagan. LP — Rivera.
2B — SH: Price 2, Lane Barkley 2, Wegener 2, Vossen, Flanagan; EHS: B. Keisler.