The Galion baseball team made its final stand to overcome a 9-5 lead against conference Pleasant at the top of the seventh inning Monday evening.
But the Tigers came up short adding just to more runs for a final score of 9-7. Galion’s record drops to 3-4 in the Mid Ohio Athletic Conference and 4-7 overall. The team’s struggles continue since the Jonathan Alder defeated it 14-0.
“We’re all frustrated,” Galion head coach Phil Jackson said. “We’re not playing the type of baseball that we’re capable of playing.”
Offensively, the Tigers were at bat 32 times with 10 hits, 5 runs batted in and 10 strikeouts, while the Spartans were at 27 times with seven hits, 8 RBIs and five strikeouts.
Mac Spears took the loss. He pitched for two innings with three hits, two earned runs and a strikeout. On the other hand, Bryce Pytlarz was the winning pitcher for the Spartans, pitching for all seven innings, with four earned runs and 10 strikeouts. Galion’s Garret Kuns pitched for the first four innings with four hits, four earned runs and four strikeouts.
But when Galion was in the outfield, Jackson and the team became frustrated with calls from the umpire.
“I’ll just say today’s umpiring was very much a factor in the game,” Jackson said. “But we let it effect us, we’ve got to be better than that… We’re allowing those things to influence us and we shouldn’t.”
Galion drew first blood after Ryan Talbott batted in Garret Kuns to the home plate in the first inning. But the Spartans had an answer with two more runs in the second inning from Zach Pytlarz and Matt Kelley. Galion and Pleasant even the score at three runs each in the third inning.
Pleasant head coach Chris Kubbs said at that point he knew the seventh inning would determine the outcome.
“I thought the kids handled themselves well,” he said.
Pleasant took the lead in the fifth inning but widened the lead in the sixth with three runs on a double by Chase Ambrose sending Kwauve Booker and Bryce Pytlarz home.
Garret Kuns and Matt Hardy both made three runs each. Hardy had three hits and an RBI, while Kuns had two hits and a single. Ryan Talbott had one run with two hits and two RBIs.
For the Spartans, Tristin Conklin had three RBIs, while Kwauve Booker had three singles.
Jackson said the team does all the right things in practice but doesn’t translate well into an actual game. The team has another catcher eligible to play for the next game, Jackson said, while the team continue to work around an injury from a previous game.
The Tigers will travel to play Buckeye Valley in conference action on Wednesday.
“At some point, we got to get turn around,” Jackson said.
