Knights avenge 7-6 loss on Tuesday with 10-0 victory over Middletown
By Brian Sumpter
Lake County Sports on Facebook
KELSEYVILLE >> Sophomore ace JD Smart wiggled out of some early trouble to keep the Middletown Mustangs off the scoreboard and sophomore shortstop took it from there with both his bat and glove as the Kelseyville Knights notched a 10-0 North Central League I varsity baseball win Friday afternoon at Lloyd Larson Field.
Kelseyville avenged a 7-6 league-opening loss to Middletown just three days earlier in Middletown.
In a matchup of aces, Smart outdueled Middletown senior Jon Hawkins, who left the game trailing 4-0 after three innings. Smart went the distance for Kelseyville (1-1 league, 2-9 overall), allowing only three hits, striking out 11, including the side in the first and fifth innings, and walking two.
Hawkins worked a 1-2-3 first inning before running into trouble in the second, some of it of his own making as he hit one and walked two, including Max Lee with the bases loaded, to bring home the game’s first run. Michael Dougherty then rolled a single into shallow field, a grounder that eluded both the Middletown third baseman and shortstop, to bring home another run. Hawkins did retire the final two Knights to leave the bases loaded.
Kelseyville’s next two runs in the third inning were quite a bit more dramatic. After Case Pivniska reached on an error to open the bottom of the third, Stone belted a fastball over the fence in left-center field to make it 4-0. The Knights again went on to load the bases before Hawkins struck out Deake Lyndall to end the inning.
The home run was Stone’s second hit of the day – he led off the bottom of the second inning with a single – and he would collect a third hit, a triple to the left-field corner, in the fourth inning, leaving him a double shy of the cycle. His final at-bat nearly resulted in another home run, but the deep flyball to left field was caught near the wall by Middletown’s Blake Costlow. However, it still drove in a run as JD Smart tagged up from third and scored.
Stone also worked a little magic with his glove, ranging deep into the hole at shortstop with a Middletown runner at third base and two outs in the top of the third and retiring Hunter Karp out with a strong throw across the diamond.
“He did a great job,” Kelseyville head coach Billy Shaul said of Stone, who had another web gem in the top of the fourth when he gloved a popup off the bat of Austin Davis in shallow left field, just before it dropped in between Stone and a pair of charging outfielders for a bloop single.
Hawkins didn’t exactly get a ton of support from his teammates, not on this day. Middletown’s infield defense was shaky at best, including three errors in the bottom of the third inning, and the Middletown offense only had three hits, two of those by Hawkins, who doubled in each of his first two at-bats. Hayden Xavier had the only other Mustangs hit, a leadoff single by Hayden Xavier in the fourth.
Middletown also put its leadoff batter on base in the first inning when Hawkins led off the game with a double. He never moved from there because Smart struck out the next three Mustangs batters.
Smart issued back-to-back walks to open the top of the second, but the Mustangs again came up empty. Smart struck out the next batter before the inning ended on a groundball double play.
After Hawkins doubled with one out in the third and moved to third on a sacrifice bunt, Karp nearly got the Mustangs on the board with a hard grounder to the left side only to be denied by Stone and his play in the hole.
Smart retired the final nine batters he faced, six of them on strikeouts.
After scoring two runs in the second and two more in the third to go up 4-0, the Knights added two runs in the fourth on an error and a Ryan Keithly sacrifice fly, and four more in the sixth on a Pivniska RBI single, Stone sacrifice fly, Keithly RBI double and Lee bases-loaded walk, his second of the game.
While it was only the Knights’ second win of the season, they’ve been in almost every game they’ve played, including five one-run losses. While they’ve struggled in other areas, a lack of timely hitting and a lack of production from the lower half of the lineup has been key. On Friday, they did a much better job on both counts, led by Stone (3-for-3) and Smart (2-for-4). Kelseyville finished with nine hits overall.
“That’s the team we expect to be,” Shaul said. “Hopefully that opens our eyes.”
Added Shaul, “We hit the ball hard, we put the ball into play. We’re still green on baseball knowledge, and we’ve got to be almost perfect every single game because we don’t have the margin for error our last few teams (all veteran squads) have had.”
Middletown (1-1, 5-4) plays Tuesday at Upper Lake, weather permitting, before returning home Friday to play Upper Lake again. Kelseyville is scheduled to host Lower Lake on Tuesday before the same two teams meet again Friday in Lower Lake.
