PLYMOUTH – It was a beautiful day for baseball and the start seemed promising but the end was something Triton will likely want to forget as Plymouth’s Pilgrims took a 24-0 win over the Trojans at Bill Nixon Field.
Cole Filson got his first start of the young season for the Pilgrims and struggled mightily for two hitters. Delano Shumpert and Max Slusser led off the game for Triton with walks and promptly moved to second and third with no outs on a wild pitch.
That was the point where Filson flipped the switch and proceeded to strike out the next six hitters and eight out of the nine outs total in his three innings. Slusser doubled in the third as the only hit Filson surrendered.
Meanwhile Triton ace Dylan Hensley wasn’t his sharpest but he also couldn’t catch a break as every Plymouth batted ball seemed to find a place where no Trojan fielder was as the Pilgrims ran up three first inning runs and never looked back. Hensley left in the third trailing 13-0.
“It’s the first time Dylan has pitched against us because they usually have a conference game, he is a great pitcher,” said Plymouth coach Ryan Wolfe. “For us to come out and be aggressive at the plate and hit the ball hard and I thought we ran the bases very well, was big. It was great to jump out to a lead.”
Plymouth blew the game wide open in that third with 11 runs on seven hits part of a 20 hit Plymouth attack that saw nearly every hitter get into the swing of things. This week has been a drastic switch for Pilgrim bats.
“We’ve talked about that the last couple of practices, being aggressive and not taking as many pitches as we have been,” said Wolfe. “Maybe it was the cold. Maybe they wanted to see some pitches but now we are starting to get into a groove.”
Filson helped himself with three hits and four RBI’s in the game. Noah Pesak had five RBI’s for the Pilgrims, and six players had two hit games and seven had multiple RBI’s. Cam Dennie tripled home a run in the first.
Plymouth also had seven stolen bases, two each from Thomas Dolan and Benji Nixon.
While their weren’t a multitude of chances the Pilgrims also did not make an error.
“We moved a lot of guys around (defensively) and going into the conference season we may be moving guys around to a lot of positions with our injury situation,” said Wolfe. “The thing is that we are athletic and we can put a lot of guys in a lot of places and they do a fine job.”
The Pilgrims continue to be haunted by some injuries, they received word before the game that Ezra Winkle will be lost of the season with pending knee surgery while Cam Dennie and Jackson Lee continue to play through nagging injuries.
“We were going to try to push Cole (Filson) to four innings because he will almost definitely pitch for us at some point during the conference season,” said Wolfe. “But when we got up like that we wanted to get Noah (Pesak) and Benji (Nixon) on the mound. It’s good to see that moving into Monday.”
Monday starts the NLC grind for Plymouth (2-2) with a road game at Elkhart Memorial. First pitch is slated for 5:30 p.m. Triton (0-1) will be in action Friday at Tippecanoe Valley.
•PLYMOUTH 24, TRITON 0
At Bill Nixon Field
Triton 0 0 0 0 0 0-3-3
Plymouth 3 6 11 4 x 24-20-0
WP – Cole Filson (1-0). LP – Dylan Hensley (0-1). 3B – Cam Dennie (P). 2B – Max Slusser (T), Jackson Lee (P), Noah Pesak (P).
