Patient at the plate, opportunistic on the bases and dominant on the mound, Emporia High had no need to draw out and savor a terrific night for a baseball game Friday at Trusler Sports Complex.
A seven-run, five-walk first inning for Emporia set the tone, and Jacob Loucks shut out Louisburg on one hit as EHS took care of the Wildcats in five innings and less than two hours. The 12-0 victory on senior night was Emporia’s fourth straight and continued the Spartans’ trend of beating the teams they should beat.
“I think we’re peaking at the right time,” said junior catcher Remington Pinick, who had three hits in as many trips to the plate and added two stolen bases. “I think we need to keep playing like this, keep the intensity high, don’t drop the intensity at all. We need to do this the rest of the year and finish strong.”
Loucks, the Spartans’ top pitcher, was in control from the start. Well, technically not from the very start — Louisburg shortstop Chris Cook led off the game with a double to right. But after that, the Wildcats didn’t touch Loucks; the junior retired 15 of the 16 Louisburg hitters that came to the plate for the remainder of the game, giving up only a walk to Ryan Dvorak to lead off the second. Loucks struck out 10 and showed excellent command of both his fastball and curve. He froze Canon Teague on a well-placed breaking ball on the outside corner to end the third inning, then got Cody Larson on a fastball on the outer black in the fourth. His strikeout of Alek Vance to finish the fifth and invoke the 10-after-5 run rule put an appropriate punctuation mark on the end of the game.
“I came in a lot more focused than I have the past couple of outings, where I haven’t done as well,” Loucks said. “But tonight, senior night, I wanted to get a win for these guys. They’re what makes this team go.”
The Spartan seniors provided much of their offensive contribution by letting bad pitches go by. Left fielder Zach Gifford walked three times out of the leadoff spot, scored the game’s first run and drove in another. Dominic Rodriguez walked twice, scored once and singled home a run. Corey Bacon went 2-for-3, dropping a bunt single down the third base line in the first and adding an RBI single in the third to make the score 11-0. He also stole a base and drove in another run on a groundout in the second.
“We had some good at-bats today, and our kids were patient,” EHS coach Mike Strickland said.
A bloop single by Pinick, Bacon’s bunt and a two-run single to left center by Brian Keisler were all the hits EHS needed on their way to seven runs in the first. In addition to those five walks — including three straight to 8-9-1 hitters Matt Fry, Brett Lechien and Gifford to force in a run — Louisburg helped the Spartans out with two errors, two passed balls and a wild pitch. Emporia sent 12 batters to the plate.
EHS also repeatedly caught the self-destructive Wildcats napping defensively — even though they didn’t mean to. In each of the first three innings, the Spartans stole second base after the pitcher stepped off the mound. Fry pulled it off in the first inning, and Keisler did it in the second and Nielsen in the third.
Were the Spartans seeing something in Louisburg’s defense and intentionally taking off early?
“No, to be honest with you,” Strickland said. “We were trying to get some early reads, and we make some poor choices there. We still wound up benefiting from it, but that’s something there that we make some errors baserunning there tonight. We can’t do that.”
Pinick continued his hot hitting in the bottom of the third, lofting an RBI double into the gap in right center to score Nielsen, who had walked to start the inning, and Loucks, who had singled. Rodriguez followed with a single the opposite way to left center, and Bacon dropped a looper into right field to bring home another run to make it 11-0. Gary Rivera added an RBI single as a pinch-hitter to cap a four-run inning.
Friday’s doubleheader, featuring a Winfield victory over Eudora on the front end, was moved to Trusler because of the soggy conditions at Soden’s Grove following Thursday night’s storm. Today’s pair of games were also scheduled to be held at Trusler: Louisburg vs. Winfield at 9 a.m., followed by the Spartans and Eudora at 11:30 a.m.
Strickland said the four-team, two-day package of doubleheaders could plant the seeds for an annual event.
“We’re wanting to bring a couple more home games to our schedule and maybe starting to have a little Emporia High Classic each year,” he said. “... Because with our schedule, we have nine league teams. That’s 18 games; in the state of Kansas, you know, you play 20, so we had to pick up two games. So it’s nice to come here and play ’em at home...”
Friday at Trusler
Louisburg (5-12) 000 00 — 0 1 3
Emporia (10-7) 714 0x — 12 10 0
WP — Loucks. LP — K. Cook.
2B — LOU: C. Cook; EHS: Pinick. SB — EHS: Pinick 2, Nielsen, Bacon, Keisler, Fry.