PLYMOUTH – Saturday night baseball was good to Plymouth’s Pilgrims as they finished their final non-conference test of the early season with a 9-5 win over South Central.
The big number for the Pilgrims was the zero in the error column as tight defense was able to make up for bouts of wildness from starter Caleb Mikesell and reliever Jeremy Splix.
“That’s one of our helmet stickers, one of them is if we have no errors,” said Plymouth head coach Ryan Wolfe. “We work on it a lot in practice. We take a lot of ground balls in practice. We had some freebies tonight – some walks – and when you couple them with errors they can have big innings. I thought we made some plays to get out of innings.”
That they did as the Plymouth defense stayed solid and pitchers used that confidence in the defense to recover their confidence. Mikesell regained his edge to get out of the third and record a one, two, three fourth. Splix had a similar reaction getting out of a tough fifth and striking out three of the last four hitters he faced.
The Plymouth lefty was a different pitcher in his second inning of relief.
“That’s what he said to me is he didn’t feel right in that first inning,” said Wolfe. “You’re going to have those where you aren’t feeling your best but you have to fight through it. That’s why we went back with him. We had Jeremy (Drudge) warmed up but we got a couple runs and we had to see. We have a lot of confidence in him, if he can get his curve ball over he’s a weapon.”
Meanwhile the Plymouth bats were providing ample assistance for the win with 11 hits in the game.
The big blow was a two out, two run double by Jeremy Drudge in the first inning that staked the Pilgrims to a lead they would never relinquish.
Our keys are two out hits when you score with two outs it’s huge and it’s demoralizing to the other team too. You want to get off the field and you extend the inning that’s big.
Mikesell helped his own cause with a two run double and an RBI single, Brayden Davidson was three for four on the night with a double and an RBI.
The Pilgrims move to 4-1 on the year and open conference play at Elkhart Memorial on Monday night. South Central is now 2-3.
LINESCORE
S. Central 0 1 2 0 2 0 0 5-7-5
Plymouth 2 2 0 0 2 2 x 9-11-0
WP – Splix (1-0). LP – Sims. 2B – Mikesell (P), Davidson (P), Drudge (P).
