Central shut out in baseball defeat

Central College

AUBURNDALE, FLA.— The offense of the Central College baseball team was stymied Friday by Concordia-Chicago, falling in a 6-0 shutout.
A day after scoring seven runs on 12 hits, the Dutch (2-4) were held scoreless and limited to three hits by the Cougars (7-2).

“They threw their best pitcher against us and he was pretty dominant,” coach Matt Schirm said. “We’ve got some things we need to work on to make sure we get better for when we face a top-level pitcher in our conference.”

Registering a multi-hit game for the second straight day, catcher Michael Reuter (junior, Monticello) led the Dutch going 2-for-3.

“Mike was probably the one guy that put together some good at-bats,” Schirm said. “He had a couple of hard hit balls.”

In five of the last seven innings, Central would strand runners in scoring position.

“We had some opportunities,” Schirm said, “We could never came up with a key hit to push a run across.”

Reuter was also crucial to limiting a strength of the Cougars.

“Coming into the game, they had 25 stolen bases in seven games,” Schirm said. “We held them without a stolen base and did a really good job of controlling the running game.”

Dakotah Wolken (senior, Dillon, Iowa, East Marshall HS) took the loss on the mound for the Dutch, allowing 14 hits but giving up just five runs in six innings of work.

Saturday morning’s contest against Oglethorpe (Ga.) will be the final game of the team’s spring break trip and it will end just like it started as Dylan Diveney (sophomore, Marshalltown) gets the ball to start the game.

“Anytime he’s on the mound, we have a good chance to win.” Schirm said. “We need to get back to stringing together good at-bats and we need to continue playing solid defense.”

The game against Oglethorpe (Ga.) will start at 8:15 a.m. (CDT) in Auburndale.