Click the thumbnails to see photos and videos, and to hear post-game interviews with Easton Miller and Isaac Sarles.
MARINETTE, Wis.---The Marquette Blues American Legion baseball team could not overcome five defensive errors and inconsistent hitting on Friday, and lost the first game of the Firecracker Tournament to Green Bay Southwest, 5-4, at Pederson Ballpark in Marinette, Wis.
Issac Sarles battled on the mound all day long, throwing the maximum 105 pitches in a seven-inning complete-game effort. But defensive errors behind him led to four unearned runs and the Marquette offense could not score enough to make up for those errors.
"Tough loss," Sarles said. "We fought, though,and we kept ourselves in the game. You know, to play the way we did, and only lose by one, I'm OK with that. I just have to do my job. I can't let that (errors) get in my head. I can control what I can control. And at the end, those guys picked themselves up and they made some plays behind me."
Green Bay took a 3-0 lead in the first inning when Carson Bohm and Ben Hess led off with singles, and then two straight errors and a wild pitch plated those runs.
Marquette got one run back in the bottom of the inning on an RBI single by AJ. Martin, and then the Blues tied the game in the second inning on a Keith Judici RBI double up the right-center field gap, followed by a run-scoring ground out by Braiden Noskey.
A dropped fly ball in right field gave Green Bay a free run in the top of the third inning, and an Emmett Hunter RBI single in the fourth inning made it a 5-3 game. The Blues got one back in the bottom of the fifth inning when Easton Miller singled and eventually scored on a throwing error by the Green Bay second baseman who was trying to turn a 6-4-3 double play.
Green Bay pitcher Zach Lemieux went the first five innings before giving way to Lakeland University pitcher Jackson Spejcher in the sixth inning.
He retired the Blues 1-2-3 in the sixth inning, before he walked Noskey to start the seventh inning. Noskey stole second and went to third on a grounder, so the tying run was at third base with two out. Spejcher struck out Martin to end the game.
"We had to earn our runs today," Miller said. "We gave them their's, that's for sure. We had tro keep the team high and try to battle back, but you can only dig out of such a big hole for so long."
Bohm led the Southwest team by going 4-fo4 from the leadoff spot, as Sarles gave up a total of nine hits. Marquette had five hits, with five different players getting one base hit each.
Marquette returns to action on Saturday against Marinette at 1:30 ET. Catch the radio broadcast on FM-100.3 and on-line at www.radioresultsnetwork.com.
