WARRENSBURG, MO. — A little ninth-inning drama was only appropriate.
With a trip to the South Central Regional championship on the line Sunday against Angelo State, the Hornets gave closer Diego Soto the ball with a two-run cushion, looking for a nice one-two-three ninth inning to send them on their merry way to a rematch against Central Missouri.
No drama? Yeah right. Not on this day.
Soto loaded the bases, putting the winning run on first with a one-out walk. But luckily, Andy Cotton saved Soto with a highlight-reel double play to give the Hornets a 5-3 win and a ticket to today’s championship.
“Diego made it interesting in the end,” ESU coach Bob Fornelli said, “but found a way to get it done.”
It was a much better ending than Sunday’s matinee against Central Missouri, which featured an edge-of-your seat nine innings with a near-perfect game from pitcher Tyler Applehans and a Central Missouri two-run comeback in the ninth for a 2-1 win.
The weary-eyed Hornets entered the must-win semifinal against Angelo State with the UCM loss lingering, and it showed.
“First game was hype from the very beginning,” Kenny Burkhead said. “That game was so fun to play in. It had so much intensity all game long, and then sitting around for 45 minutes was hard to come back from, because you have to sit around and you sort of get all sore and stiff... The first five innings weren’t very clean.”
The Rams had a 3-2 lead thanks to a two-run fifth inning in which they had only one ball leave the infield against ESU starter Ryan Anthony. Anthony kept his pitches low and the Rams kept the ball on the ground, but three infield singles and a chopper that got through the hole between second and first led to two runs.
The Rams only other run in came in the third inning, also on an infield single. Anthony gave up only six hits — all singles — in five innings, and four of those hits were infield singles.
“He pitched good,” Fornelli said. “He just didn’t have a whole lot of luck.”
Meanwhile, the ESU offense was having a tough time catching its own breaks. ESU loaded the bases in the fourth inning with only one out and could not get a run in.
The Hornets had runners at the corners with only one out in the sixth and again they could not score. Jacob White laid down a suicide squeeze bunt to try to score Kellen Lane. Even though Fornelli’s call was a safety squeeze — meaning Lane was only supposed to run if he saw contact — he did not get the message and was running all the way, and ASU pitcher Kenny Elkind threw Lane out at the plate.
With Dominic King keeping the Hornets in the game by throwing up zeros, they finally tied the game and took the lead in the seventh inning. Kevin Wempe hit a one-out double, Burkhead hit his second infield single of the game, Caleb Williamson walked and Lane drove in Wempe with a single to left that tied it.
Mike Sharp, who went 2-for-2 with a double and a walk, gave the Hornets the lead with a sacrifice fly to center that scored Burkhead. Lane added an insurance run in the ninth with another RBI single, scoring Burkhead.
King (4-0) threw three scoreless innings to pick up the win and gave way to Soto in the ninth. Soto picked up his 10th and most eventful save, giving up back-to-back one-out singles and then walking the bases loaded. Tony Kostelnik hit what could have been a game-tying single to shallow left field, but Cotton ran it down and then threw Clay Puckett out at third to end the game.
“I’m proud of these guys, because a lot of teams would have hung their heads after that first game, and we could have got beat that second game, but they stuck with it even through the good and the bad that game,” Fornelli said. “They continued to battle and gave us an opportunity to get to tomorrow.”
The Hornets could have avoided today’s game with a win against Central, which would have made Sunday’s win against ASU the regional-championship clincher.
Applehans took a one-hitter and a 1-0 lead into the ninth, but Bret Schwartz hit a one-out single and Will Feil tied the game with a triple down the right field line.
Soto came on in relief, and with the infield in, Jon Wegener hit a chopper to short that scored Feil for the go-ahead run that ruined the Hornets’ Sunday celebration plans and staved off elimination for the Mules.
“(Soto) is a guy we’ve got full trust in, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time if I should have went to him in the first game,” Fornelli said. “Nothing I can do about that.”
The ESU offense, which scored 36 runs in the first two games of the regional, will also be playing the what-if game if the Hornets fail to win today’s championship. The Hornets wasted several opportunities to give Applehans more than a one-run cushion.
Emporia State’s one run came in the fifth inning. Mike Sharp hit a one-out double and scored on Anthony Dreiling’s RBI single. Dreiling was thrown out trying to go for a double, one of several baserunning mistakes by the Hornets.
Sharp also tried to stretch a single into a double in the seventh and was thrown out. Jacob White had a one-out single in the third and was picked off at first base by Ryan Romo.
“We kind of shot ourselves in the foot by not doing some little things early in the game that would have given us an opportunity to get a run,” Fornelli said. “A lot of ifs and buts, but we have nothing to do but look forward to the next game.”
Before the ninth, Applehans (7-4) gave up just one hit in the fifth inning. Matt LaGree lined a single to left field that dropped in when Kellen Lane slipped while giving chase.
With two outs in the fifth, Stewart Hoover walked to give the Mules runners at first and second, but Applehans got Colin Murphy to fly out to end the inning.
The Mules again had a base-runner in the sixth, but Applehans battled out of it and ended a long inning by striking Feil out looking.
Applehans entered the seventh with a pitch count of 109, and he got just what he needed, a six-pitch one-two-three inning. He got through a perfect eighth in just nine pitches, and ESU coach Bob Fornelli decided to leave him in for the ninth.
In his fourth time up, Feil made an adjustment, crowding the plate and looking to go opposite field.
“He just hit a good pitch,” Applehans said. “It was on the outside and he hit it down the line. Can’t do much about it.”
Emporia State will get its second chance to beat Central Missouri today at noon. The Mules are expected to start ace Brooks Martin, and Fornelli said he would start either Colby Killian or Cole Moore. Killian started Thursday against Angelo State and threw only 81 pitches in six scoreless innings.
The Hornets and Mules have each won three games against each other this season, and the deciding Game 7 will be for a trip to the World Series.
“It’s the rival,” Burkhead said. “It’s what it should come down to. This stadium should be packed. It’s going to be a sold-out crowd, hype from the beginning just like the last game, but it’s going to be more intense because it’s the championship. One game to go to North Carolina, and I’m excited for it.
“But I’m dead tired right now. This whole team’s dead tired. We’ll get some sleep and rest, and it’s going to be a fun day tomorrow.”
South Central Regional
Sunday at Crane Stadium
Game One
Central Missouri 000 000 002 — 2 4 0
Emporia State 000 010 000 — 1 7 0
WP — Matlock. LP — Applehans.
DP — UCM 1. LOB — UCM 3, ESU 2. 2B — ESU: Crumbliss 2, Sharp. 3B — UCM: Feil. SH — UCM: Tuttle.
Game Two
Emporia State 110 000 201 — 5 10 0
Angelo State 010 020 000 — 3 10 2
WP — King. LP — Elkind. SV — Soto.
E — ASU: Lasprilla, Carter. DP — ESU 2, ASU 1. LOB — ESU 12, ASU 8. 2B — ESU: Wempe, Burkhead, Sharp. SH — ESU: Sharp, Dreiling, White; ASU: Puckett. SF — ESU: Sharp. SB — ESU: Burkhead 2; ASU: Carter.