Titans squeak past Dutch baseball squad
O’FALLON, ILLINOIS – After playing a pair of high-scoring games Saturday, the Central College baseball team dropped a narrow 4-3 contest to Illinois Wesleyan University Sunday.
Central (1-2) starting pitcher Max Steinlage (sophomore, Cedar Falls) kept the crooked numbers off the scoreboard in five innings of work, yielding just two runs on six hits and one walk with seven strikeouts. He exited with a 3-2 lead.”
“Max filled up the zone,” coach Adam Carey said. “He had three pitches working and he attacked with all three of them. He looked good and I was happy with the way he competed.”
Reliever Parker Jones (senior, Verona, Wis., Verona Area HS) was stuffed with the loss after giving up two runs in the seventh that put the Titans (2-1) in the lead for good.
Shortstop Logan McCoy (senior, Galva, Alta-Aurelia HS) was the only Dutch player with multiple hits, registering a pair of base knocks as the lead off hitter.
“He was locked in and looked good at the top of the lineup,” Carey said. “He played some clean defense at shortstop as well”
Designated hitter Caleb Douglass’s (junior, Windsor, Colo.) RBI double in the fourth put Central on the board. Right fielder Colton DeRocher (senior, Sioux City, East HS) and first baseman Declan O’Hare (fifth year, Los Angeles, Calif., John Marshall HS) each drove in a run in the fifth.
“Caleb came up really big there,” Carey said. “He stuck to his approach and hit it perfectly down the line to get the run in.”
The Dutch have a three-gamer series in Mount Vernon against Cornell College next weekend, starting with a 1 p.m. doubleheader Saturday.
“The main thing we learned this weekend is that clean defense and filling up the zone as a pitcher is going to keep us in the game no matter what,” Carey said. “We’ve also got to stick to our approach a little better in the box, even when things start to get difficult.
“We’ve got a lot of redeeming qualities. We just need to do it on a consistent basis instead of two phases being good while one phase struggles.”
