The Emporia Post 5 AAAs knew a squeeze might be coming. That didn’t make stopping it any easier.
Kansas Senators catcher Cameron Hall dropped a perfect safety-squeeze bunt on the first-base side in the seventh inning of the third-place game of the Mike’s Classic on Sunday at Soden’s Grove, scoring the winning run to give the Senators a 5-4, come-from-behind victory over the AAAs.
“When a team executes a squeeze like that, there’s really nothing you can do about it,” AAAs coach Brad Kelly said. “He bunted it in a perfect spot, and you can’t really defend that; it’s just one of those undefendable plays. They execute it well, they’re going to score.”
The Senators’ two-run bottom of the seventh put a damper on the end of the tournament for Emporia, which led Kansas 4-0 after three innings. Kelly didn’t know who was going to take the mound for Sunday’s game, but when Zach Schuler told Kelly he felt good, Schuler got the nod. He responded by going the entire way, and nearly got the complete-game win, taking a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the seventh.
But Brett Ash led off the inning with a double, and Cory Cowan — Kansas’ cleanup hitter who had taken Schuler deep two innings earlier — followed with another two-bagger to tie it. Cowan advanced to third when Schuler skipped a wild pitch past catcher Harrison Stone, and when Luke Bigler hit a fly ball to center field, it looked like it might be deep enough to bring home the winning run. But Henry Ott made the catch, then unleashed a throw home good enough to keep Cowan at third.
That brought up Hall, whose bunt the AAAs simply could do nothing with. Cowan raced home on contact to score the winning run easily.
Schuler had surrendered just three runs on seven hits entering the final inning, and he felt confident about being able to close out the Senators.
“I think the adrenaline was going, and I felt like I could do anything right there,” Schuler said. “But I made a couple of mistakes, threw a wild pitch that moved him from second to third and didn’t go from the stretch on the last (batter) to set up for that squeeze. Just a couple of mental mistakes.”
“Every inning, we were checking him, and he was actually saying that he was feeling better as the game went on,” Kelly said. “So we stuck with him. Some of the other guys said that they had some soreness in their arms, so we stuck with Zach.”
Emporia scored two in the first and two in the third to get out to its 4-0 lead. A single by Adam Ewy and back-to-back hit-by-pitches on Schuler and Michael Knight loaded the bases, and Stone scored a run with a fly ball to center. Casey Atchison later added a fielder’s-choice RBI. Ryne Cook doubled home a run in the third, and Ott later added an RBI single, but after the latter hit, the AAAs still had the bases loaded with just one out. They failed to add any more runs, as Travis LeMay struck out and Sean Carr grounded into a fielder’s choice.
For the game, both the AAAs and the Senators left nine runners on base.
“We had bases loaded, and we had runners in scoring position a couple of innings,” Kelly said. “And it just seems like that’s been (our) Achilles heel all year, is just not being able to get that two-out hit and score some runs there.
“But overall... Zach Schuler pitched really well. He pitched Friday, and we asked him to come back today and do it, and he competed real well out there.”
Cook had two hits and a walk, and Ott had two singles. For Kansas, Cowan’s home run and double gave him three RBIs for the game, and Rich Oppitz had an RBI double that got the Senators on the board in the fourth.
The AAAs finished 2-3 on the weekend, including a pair of losses to Ottawa and Olathe South, the two teams that squared off in the championship game later Sunday; Ottawa took the title with an 11-9 win.
“There was those two games, Ottawa and Olathe South, where I didn’t really feel like we competed that well,” Kelly said. “But the other three games we played pretty well; we played well defensively. “I’m pleased with what we did this weekend, for the most part overall.”