PLYMOUTH – It was another frustrating day at the ball park for Plymouth’s Pilgrims as once again, a solid performance fell victim to a better pitching performance, leading to a loss 3-0.
“Feels like it’s a recording the last couple of weeks,” said Plymouth head coach Ryan Wolfe. “It’s frustrating I still think we’re doing a lot of things good, but we have to find a way. We have to find a way to win some ball games. It comes down to that. If you can play good all the time and not win, there’s never a good loss. We have to find a way.”
Plymouth was handcuffed all night by another outstanding pitching performance by an opponent. This time it was Goshen’s Tyler Colpitts who ran his season record to 6-1, surrendering just six hits, striking out six and not walking a hitter in the game.
Plymouth only managed two runners even in scoring position on the night. In the second, Grant Stukenborg doubled and got as far as third. Again in the third, Jesus Luva doubled and went to third on Benji Nixon’s single but got no further.
“We have to figure out some things,” said Wolfe. “Maybe go back to square one at the plate. I thought tonight we swung early in the count. We could have worked the count a little bit. As coaches we have to go back and work on some things, the trouble is we don’t have a day off to maybe figure some things out, but we’ll keep grinding. That’s all we can do.”
Luva and Nixon each ended the night with a pair of hits for the Pilgrims. Dyllon Pavey and Jeremy Drudge had the other Plymouth singles.
Plymouth starter Nate Nixon struggled with his command for most of the night and had far from his best start of the year, but somehow found a way to make big pitches at key moments and helped himself with some slick defense as well.
With the bases loaded and no out in the fourth, Nixon hurt himself, allowing a run on a wild pitch but got pinch hitter Trenton Scott to top a ball to the right of the mound. Nixon picked it up and ran down courtesy runner Austin Cain trying to score from third. One pitch later,Nixon made a perfect scoop toss on a sacrifice squeeze to cut down Austin Bontrager trying to cross the plate.
Lead-off hitter Phillip Weaver then snuck a single through the right side and Cole Filson recorded another defensive gem – along with Pavey – to retire Scott at home plate trying to score. Ezra Winkle came on in the sixth with two perfect innings of relief.
“On a couple of those, we had the bases loade – the one we got out of it with just one,” said Wolfe. “We had some freebies and some other things and Nate (Nixon) battled and we got out of it but the bottom line is, we have to score some runs. We aren’t going to win any ball games if we don’t score runs and that’s been the achilles heel this past two weeks.
“We’re one performance away from maybe finding it again. We have to change something in our approach or something so we can put the ball in play;just find something here in the next couple of days.”
Plymouth is now 10-9 on the year and 5-6 in the NLC. Goshen is 15-7 and 7-4 in the conference.
Goshen 3, Plymouth 0
At Plymouth
Goshen 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 3-6-0
Plymouth 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0-6-2
WP – Tyler Colpitts. LP – Nate Nixon. 2B – Grant Stukenborg.
