After jumping out to a 1-0 lead against Butler on Wednesday night, the Manual baseball team (4-4) failed to hold off the Bears and lost 4-1. The Crimsons struggled to hit the ball in clutch situations all night, as Manual stranded ten runners on base throughout the game, with seven of those runners being in scoring position.
“We have to go up there and be more aggressive,” catcher Chris Gambert (11, #25) said. “Right now we’re being a little passive when we hit with runners in scoring position, and I think that this is one of our biggest problems right now.”
On three separate occasions Manual had two runners on base with less than two outs, and the Crimsons could only muster up one run out of all of those opportunities.
“You gotta get those runners in no matter what,” Gambert said. “We went up there and we were being too particular. We’re letting pitches go right down the middle that we should be getting base hits on. You have to go up there with a purpose. You have to look at that first pitch to hit. You can’t get too particular, especially with runners in scoring position.”
Perhaps Manual’s best opportunity to score came in the seventh inning, when the Crimsons were making a desperate last attempt to try to overcome the three-run deficit. With Trae Gordon (12, #8) on second and Matthew Olsen (11, #3) on first with no outs, Manual had a shot to get back into the ball game. However, after Gambert popped out, and Jarrett Harness (12, #4) and Tate McGarvey (12, #23) both grounded out, the game was quickly over.
“We just need to hit,” head coach Matt Timbario said. “When it comes time to put runs on the board any of our guys can hit when nobody is on base. But when it comes time to grind it out and get some runs on the board we gotta do a better job at it. We left ten guys on base and seven of them were in scoring position. If we can get that together, we’ll be pretty good.”
Gambert did have a good game besides his last at bat. After reaching on a walk in the first inning, Gambert came to the plate in the bottom of the third inning with Olsen on first and ripped a double down the left field line. Olsen scored on a Harness ground ball on the next play for Manual’s only run of the game.
“I got up there and the kid was throwing pretty good, probably throwing 86 to 88 [miles per hour], which is probably the hardest pitcher we’ve seen all year,” Gambert said. “I was just going up there with a purpose, I saw a runner on first, in my first at-bat I was kind of studying him, doing what I could to get out of it. Luckily, he put it over the plate and I put a good swing on it and got a hit.”
However, Manual only got one run out of the inning, and stranded Riley Noe (10, #1), who pinch ran for Gambert, on second base.
“Yeah, I put a good swing on the ball, but realistically I’m more worried about how the team is going from that,” Gambert said. “So yeah, I put us into good scoring position, but now what can we do after that? So basically my approach was to hit the first fastball that he gave me, and he left me one up, midde-in, and I just turned on it and it was a good thing that I hit it hard and got it down the line.”
For a while, it looked like the one run would be enough to hold off the Bears as starting pitcher Campbell Seiler pitched a great game. In his six innings pitched, Seiler only gave up two unearned runs, as well as four hits and three walks, and recorded five strikeouts.
“Seiler was keeping hitters off balance,” Timbario said. “We’d start guys off with off-speed pitches and then mix in a fastball. But he kept them off balance all game long and I’m very proud of Campbell, he pitched really well.”
However, the Crimson defense helped doom Seiler and Manual in the sixth inning. Still up 1-0, Seiler gave up a base hit with one out. Then the next Butler batter hit a high pop-up to shallow left field for McGarvey, who, unfortunately for the Crimsons, dropped the ball. After a ground out and a walk, the next Butler batter drilled in a two-out RBI double to give the Bears the lead for good. After Butler got two more insurance runs off of Bryan Hoffmann (11, #15), Manual couldn’t recover.
“The one that Tate [McGarvey] dropped in left field kind of switched momentum against us in the game,” Gambert said.
The loss drops Manual to a 500 record at 4-4. The Crimsons will host Atherton at Derby City Field on Thursday, before not having another game until after Spring Break. The Crimsons want to focus on playing a full seven innings in future games.
“We just need to know that we can play with anybody,” Timbario said. “Butler’s a very good team, they’re a very good program. For the first five innings of that game I think that we looked like the better team. We just gotta play the full seven innings.”
Gambert is still confident in the team moving forward.
“We have a good team here,” Gambert said. “I believe that this is the best team at Manual that we have had in a long time, and I’m going to stand behind that no matter this season ends, and no matter how people look at us.”
