Cardinals pin 7-3 loss on Knights
Clear Lake improves to 2-0 in NCL I standings as Smart goes the distance against Kelseyville
KELSEYVILLE >> Winning pitcher Drake Smart faced the minimum number of batters through three innings and went on to throw a complete-game six-hitter as the Clear Lake Cardinals built a 7-1 lead en route to a 7-3 North Central League I varsity baseball victory over the Kelseyville Knights on Friday afternoon at Lloyd Larson Field.
While the three runs were a season-high for Kelseyville (0-2 league, 0-5 overall), it wasn’t nearly enough to beat Clear Lake, which now has its first twogame winning streak of the year after a 1-5 preseason. Following a 16-6 win over Willits in five innings Tuesday in their league opener, the Cardinals are finally hitting the ball in clutch situations, and the end result is a team that’s getting more confident by the second.
“That was a big win for us today,” Clear Lake head coach Ed Pepper said with an eye toward a Clear Lake-Kelseyville baseball rivalry that has been largely dominated by the Knights in recent years. “These guys were hungry. We’re riding the high right now.”
While the Knights showed flashes of breaking through at the plate — they scored a total of four runs in their first four games and were shut out twice — they couldn’t do enough to offset an off day by their ace, senior Jeremy Brown, who has been missed two weeks with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder. He lasted four innings against Clear Lake, allowing seven runs (six earned) on seven hits with five strikeouts and two walks.
“He was missing up in the zone and that’s not him,” Kelseyville head coach Billy Shaul said. “He usually gets ahead in the counts and he wasn’t doing that either. He just really didn’t have it today.”
Shaul added that the Clear Lake players had a pretty good scouting report on Brown, who plays summer ball with many of them.
“They know each other,” Shaul said.
Smart, who struck out eight and walked one, received all the run support he would need in the top of the third when the Cardinals rallied for a 4-0 lead. The first six Clear Lake batters reached base against Brown, four of them with hits. Cody Hayes led off with a single to right field and Ryan Ollenberger was hit by a pitch. Smart then helped his own cause with an infield single to deep shortstop that scored Hayes all the way from second as the ball trickled into shallow left field. Werner followed with a triple into the right-center field gap for a 3-0 lead. He scored when Ethan Maize’s grounder to shortstop was booted for an error.
Maddox Albaum kept the rally going with a single, but a force play at third base, a strikeout and a popup to the pitcher ended the inning.
Clear Lake tacked on three more runs in the top of the fourth, loading the bases without benefit of a hit as both Hayes and Ollenberger were hit by pitches before Smart walked. Werner’s RBI groundout to shortstop upped the Cardinals’ led to 5-0. Maize (2for-4) then singled back up the middle against a drawnin infield to make it 7-0.
Kelseyville got one of those runs back in the bottom of the fourth on a Clear Lake fielding error after the Knights put runners at second and third with only one out.
It remained 7-1 until the bottom of the sixth when the Knights had their best inning of the season, scoring two runs on four hits. With one out, Brown (2-for3) doubled to left field and Jake Keithly singled him over to third base. Zayne Barker kept the hit parade going with a ground-rule double down the right-field line, scoring Brown and sending Keithly to third. Chase Larsen’s RBI single to right-center field cut Clear Lake’s lead to 7-3. With runners at the corners, the Knights needed one more big hit to get back into the game, but Smart wiggled his way out of the jam by retiring the next two batters on a grounder to third and a popup to the mound.
Smart needed only 87 pitches to record the complete game.
Both teams had some great play from their outfield. In the bottom of the fifth, Kelseyville’s Colin Jensen (2-for-3) doubled to center field only to make the mistake of trying to stretch it into a triple with his team down by four runs. Hayes’ throw from center field was on target to cutoff man Maize at shortstop. Maize relayed the ball to third baseman Justin Williams, who was waiting with the ball and applied the tag.
“That kind of took the momentum away from them,” Pepper said of the Knights.
The mental mistake hurt even more when the next Kelseyville batter was hit by a pitch.
“That’s just a lack of experience right there,” Shaul said of Jensen’s baserunning error. “It was an aggressive mistake, you just hope he learns from it. Hopefully we’ll learn from our mistakes.”
However, the defensive play of the game belonged to Kelseyvlle left fielder Andrew Huggins, who made a fully extended diving catch near the left-field line in the top of the seventh, taking extra bases away from pinch-hitter Christian Oliver.
Huggins was a couple of feet off the ground when he gloved the ball. He hit the ground hard but held onto it.
“We played defense today,” Shaul said of Kelseyville’s one error. “That was a great catch.”
And there was some other good news for the Knights, who had a really scary moment in Tuesday’s 8-1 loss at Cloverdale where Justin Gentle squared around on a sacrifice bunt and took a fastball off his chin, which resulted in a hairline fracture of his jaw. Gentle not only suited up Friday but played the whole game.
Clear Lake returns home Tuesday to play Middletown (1-1) while Kelseyville is home against Willits. Both games start at 4 p.m.
“Right now I can’t say enough about the way we’re playing, we’re playing like a team,” Pepper said. “We’re a force to be reckoned with in this league.”
Shaul said the Knight will go back to work Monday in practice before hosting the Wolveirnes on Tuesday when they can hopefully come away with that elusive first win of the 2021 season.
“We’ll just keep moving forward. That’s all you can do.”