St. Marys baseball rallies over Minster during game

In a classic battle of baseball, St. Marys Memorial defeated Minster 5-4 on a walk-off single from Jacob Kaiser in the bottom of the seventh on Monday.

“It was a very nice win for us against a very good program year in and year out. Joel (Kogge) pitched really well for us last night. He did a good job of changing speeds and being around the plate and Jacob did a nice job of coming in in the seventh and working himself out of a jam to not give up anything,” said St. Marys coach Adam Graves.

Minster jumped on the scoreboard in the first inning with two runs. Adam Rindler singled, Nathan Beair walked, and Tyler Stueve knocked a line drive triple to center to drive in both runs.

The Wildcats extended their lead to 4-0 in the top of the fourth inning. A big play of the inning was a double from Logan Kohne to score two runs. The Roughriders countered with two runs in the bottom of the fourth. St. Marys got things going when AJ Dieringer tripled on a line drive to center. Dieringer would later come around to score. St. Marys added another run on a single by Kaiser.

The Roughriders knotted things up at four-a-piece in the bottom of the fifth inning. St. Marys executed both a sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly before Kaiser singled to drive in two more runs.

“We made the defensive plays when we needed to. AJ continues to play as well as anyone in the area at shortstop and other guys made the routine plays. Offensively, our approaches were good early on, but we hit the ball right at them. We kept with it and eventually started to chip away at their lead and break through,” said Graves.

Luke Rammel reached base for St. Marys to open the seventh inning. Later on, in the inning Kaiser delivered the two-out single to right field to score the winning run.

“In the seventh, Luke did a good job of getting on base and Kasey got down a huge bunt with 2 strikes to get us into scoring position. Then Sully got a nice sac fly to get Luke to third, and Jacob didn’t try to do too much and drove the ball to right field for a huge 2 out walk-off hit for us. We executed very well in the 7th. I’m very proud of how our guys kept fighting and played until the end of the game and came back with a nice win. Now, we’ve just got to try and keep momentum going our way and string together a few wins,” said Graves.

Connor Schmiesing was the staring pitcher for the Wildcats. Schmiesing went four innings, allowing four runs, two of them earned and only two hits. Alex Schmitmeyer threw well in two and two-thirds innings of relief for Minster.

Joel Kogge was on the hill for St. Marys. Kogge allowed five hits and four runs, two of them earned, over six innings, striking out two. Kaiser pitched a scoreless seventh inning in relief.

St. Marys improves to 7-9 on the season and Minster goes to 9-5.