Errors Costly as Steubenville Big Red Hands Wheeling Park First Loss in Baseball
Patriots miscues in the 6th help Steubenville remain unbeaten
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WHEELING -- Teams are going to have bad breaks.
For the Wheeling Park baseball team, it had a pair of those late Wednesday against Steubenville. With Big Red leading 3-2 in the top of the sixth, a pair of Patriots errors gave Steubenville more breathing room as it ran away with a 5-2 victory Wednesday night at Wheeling Park High School.
"When you have those miscues against a good team like Steubenville, it's going to cost you," Wheeling Park (4-1) coach Steve Myers said. "I think these are two pretty good ballclubs and we were right in it. There were those a couple of miscues and things go another way, the game could have been a different course."
Ethan Duggan led off the sixth inning for Big Red (3-0) with a walk. Niko Kausky brought him in with a RBI double which was then followed by a Clayton Criss single.
The Patriots were able to get two quick outs after, but that's when the errors started to pile up.
Calvin Bickerstaff struck out, but the pitch got behind the catcher and he safely made it to first. The unfortunate events kept coming for Park as Dom DeFrances made it to base safely as he hit a grounder that went through the shortstop's legs that put two more runs across the plate to make it 5-2.
"That's the key to high school baseball," Big Red coach Fred Heatherington said. "You have to put the ball into play and be aggressive on the bases. If you can do that, you're going to get some errors happening and some runs. Fortunately (Wednesday), we were able to do that."
The Patriots had a pair of opportunities in the final two innings to respond, but the Big Red defense stood firm. Nolan Mattern supplied a single in the sixth inning. Ryan Hummel followed and got on base safely thanks to a Big Red error, but no further damage was done as Park flew out to right field for the final two outs of the sixth.
Jacob Shia led the seventh inning off with a double -- his third hit of the game -- but three consecutive outs after, ended it.
"We had situations and we could have gotten a couple more timely hits, but that's baseball sometimes," Myers said. "It didn't go our way (Wednesday), but we will be back at it Friday and these guys will learn from it. We'll keep moving."
Big Red put the first two runs on the board in the top of the second as DeFrances supplied a two-run double.
Park responded in the third inning as Shia led off with a single followed by James Salvatori getting on base thanks to an error.
After a sacrifice bunt by Trevor Thomas to advance the runners, Ben Taylor pushed across the first run for the Patriots as he grouned out to first.
Salvatori then scored on a passed ball to put the score at 2-2.
"It's a battle. Two good teams playing, it's always going to be a battle," Heatherington said. "We scored a couple early and we gave them a couple. We hung in the game and got some more runs on the board. Calvin wasn't sharp until the fourth or fifth inning. He then started having command of two pitches instead of one early on which kind of hurt him."
Bickerstaff went the distance for Steubenville as he fired five strikeouts while Criss had two singles.
For the Patriots, Shia tallied two singles and a double.
"We just have to understand the game that if you make mistakes and cost yourself certain situations, a good team is going to take advantage of it," Myers said on what his team can take from the game. "I think our guys know that. They'll learn from it and will bounce back."