Poland nips Boardman, 5-4

By GREG GULAS

sports@vindy.com

POLAND

Jared Knight pitched five strong innings and Braeden O’Shaughnessy’s run-scoring double in the third inning wound up being the difference as the Poland baseball team defeated Boardman 5-4 on Thursday.

Knight, who was staked to a 4-0 lead after the first inning, took a shutout into the sixth inning before yielding to Mike Kushner, who proceeded to pick up the save. Knight allowed three runs on three hits, striking out three as Poland (7-3) won its third consecutive outing.

“It’s awesome when you get a nice little cushion to start the game,” Knight said. “My changeup helped me a lot today. When I got ahead in counts I was able to throw that pitch, which got them to ground out and pop up.”

Knight set down six of the first seven batters he faced. He credited his defense, especially catcher M.J. Farber, for their efforts behind him.

“We have a great defense. They’re always making plays and making it easy on me,” Knight said. “M.J. did a great job, nothing got by him and he was excellent behind the plate the entire game.”

A run-scoring single by O’Shaughnessy, sacrifice fly by Zachary Yaskulka and double up the center-field gap by Farber staked the Bulldogs to an early 4-0 advantage.

“To give Jared a 4-0 lead after the first inning takes a lot of pressure off of his shoulders. He threw a great game today,” O’Shaughnessy said. “He hit his spots, controlled the whole game and just pitched really well.”

Poland made it a 5-0 game in the third when Alex Barth led off by reaching on an infield error. He ended up on second base, which set the stage for O’Shaughnessy’s double down the left-field line.

O’Shaughnessy also turned a game-ending double play in the seventh inning.

“It’s nice to get the hit, but it’s awesome when you can turn the double play that ends the game,” O’Shaughnessy said. “They had runners on first and second with only one out, so to get out of there like we did against a good Boardman team makes this a big win.

“After getting four runs in the first, the thing we’ll learn from this game is that we cannot put our bats away.”

The Spartans (4-6) sent eight batters to the plate in the sixth inning to cut the Bulldogs’ lead to 5-4.

Travis Harvey reached on an infield error to start the rally, Connor Miller followed with a single then Dylan Gurski walked to load the bases. A walk to Charlie Davis with the bases juiced cut the Spartans’ deficit to 5-1 and after Cam Kreps followed with a fielder’s choice, Boardman made it a 5-2 contest.

Luke Stauffer’s single scored Davis and Kreps as the Spartans pulled to within a run.

But they couldn’t tie the game as O’Shaughnessy’s double play closed the door on the Boardman rally the following inning. The Spartans had won their two games.

“Overall, Jared did a great job,” Poland head coach Rich Murray said. “He worked behind a little too much and as a staff, we need to make sure we‘re working ahead in the count. He pitched a good game and I am proud of his effort.

“Last week we started out good, kind of gave a game away and didn’t play good on the weekend so this will give us some momentum, which we hope to keep going as we get ready for Monday.”

Spartans head coach Joe Gabriel, whose team now heads to Florida for a spring trip, appreciated the resilience of his squad after falling behind.

“We didn’t do a real good job of scoring early when we needed to,” Gabriel said. “We took a lot of time to get to their pitcher, who did a nice job of mixing speeds and then at the seventh inning, in my opinion probably the best player [O’Shaughnessy] in the area turns the double play to end the game.

“We definitely started to hit better toward the end of the game and we gave ourselves a chance, we just didn’t get that last hit that we needed.

“We did a great job of battling and that’s something we will build on. Heading down South now will give us a chance to work on some of the things that we still need to work on.