Poland earns 17 walks to defeat Maumee

By Gary Housteau

sports@vindy.com

BOARDMAN

A six-run third inning without the benefit of a hit gave Poland an 8-2 lead and they held on for a 10-7 victory over Maumee in the Junior League state tournament at the Field of Dreams in Boardman.

Poland’s 10 runs on six hits came with the benefit of 17 walks by seven different Maumee pitchers. Poland wasn’t able to fully capitalize on Maumee’s generosity as they left 14 runners on base, leaving the bases loaded on three separate occasions.

“A win’s a win,” said Poland manager John Shurilla. “We left (14) runners on base, that’s not our norm. If we go ahead and get a couple of those through each time we left them out there, the score is totally different.”

Despite all of the walks, Poland just never really got their bats going all game long. A third-inning delay of 20 minutes with Maumee at bat certainly didn’t help with the pace of the game for either team. With the game tied at 2-2, a base-runner substitution by Maumee manager Fred Freeman had the managers and the official scorer scouring through the rule book for an official explanation.

“We had that blip, we had to wait because of the substitution and the delay and everything,” Shurilla said. “Just trying to wait that out trying to get the correct call was difficult but our pitcher came back and threw strong after that.”

Fortunately for Poland, they had enough pitching to come away with the victory as Maumee made it a little interesting when they cut the Poland lead to 9-7 through the top half of the fifth. Stephen Carney pitched into the fifth inning, exiting after reaching his pitch limit. But Tyler Berry gave a strong performance with a scoreless sixth inning and two outs into the top of the seventh before he left the mound with two outs in the seventh.

“Our pitching has been strong all year. (Carney) had, I believe, 94 pitches. I was hoping we would get a sixth inning out of him,” Shurilla said. “But Tyler Berry, he’s our ice man. We wanted to save him so we can go ahead and throw him tomorrow. The whole goal was under 20 and we had 19 actually. So he’s good to go for tomorrow.”

According to Shurilla, his pitching is in really good shape going forward.

“We’ve got quite a few guys left,” the coach said. “We probably have, I can honestly say, another six or seven pitchers left that we haven’t even touched. We got two actually from our starting rotation that we didn’t even start yet. So if we can go ahead and get a win tomorrow, I think we have four days rest and that will benefit us going into the final.”

Jake Bacon led the way offensively for Poland with two hits and two RBI, scoring three runs. While Zachary Yaskulka had a hit and two RBI and Andrew Parker had two hits and RBI.

So even though it might not have been their best offensive performance of the season, it was good enough to get Poland into the championship of the winner’s bracket today against East Holmes.

“I’m ecstatic for today,” Shurilla said. “We are standing Poland proud.”