Schaumburg turns tables in Game 2 of the series

A night removed from an offensive explosion on Aug. 11, Lake Erie busted out the Saturday night fireworks show, but could not tack on a win as Schaumburg took Game 2 of the series in a big way, 13-3.

Escaping trouble early on, Lake Erie starter Payton Lobdell walked the tight rope in the first inning and was able to get out with just a pair scoring.

Looking to strike back, the Crushers looked red hot against Schaumburg starter Kit Fowler as L.J. Kalawaia, Jordan Dean and Connor Oliver led off the game with three straight doubles, but the Crushers got only one run out of the opportunity. After that, Fowler shut down the Crushers bats as he struck out six

THE SCORE

BOOMERS 13, CRUSHERS 3

of the next eight batters and found his groove.

“He attacked us with fastballs. I think I hit an off-the-end double, L.J. Hit one down the line and then (Oliver) smacked one off the wall,” Dean said. “Then he settled in, started locating his pitches better.”

Stung by the potent Boomers’ offense, the Crushers’ defense wasn’t doing Lobdell any favors. Getting three out of four hitters in the fourth inning on base on infield hits and an error, the Boomers pounced on Lobdell for back-to-back RBI doubles to push the game out of reach at 8-1.

“Defensively, we didn’t really play that sharp today, battled in the sun a little bit and we have to do a better job with that and putting two numbers in that third column doesn’t really help us out at all,” Lake Erie manager Cam Roth said. “Even though Lobdell gave up a couple there in the first, we just had to lock in better and we’re going to have to flush this one and go. This is irrelevant as of 9:35 today.”

Getting a bright spot going in the sixth, newly acquired Tyler Urps made good on his Lake Erie debut with an RBI single that scored a pair to make the score, 8-3.

But from there, the Lake Erie pitching could not stop the Boomers’ bats as Schaumburg kept adding to its lead.

Echoing his coach’s thoughts on the game, Dean said the best thing to do is forget this game with a new one coming up on Sunday with a chance to make up ground in the postseason hunt.

“We just gotta flush it,” Dean said. “Ninety-sixgame season, you’re going to have games like this. You don’t like to see it down the stretch, but it happens. It’s baseball. So if we can just stay loose and play like we did yesterday and previous games, I think we’ll be all right.”

Preaching his starting pitching as a major key to victory, Roth said it’s more important now than ever to get quality innings with just two home stands left on the schedule.

“I just think it’s all going to stem from starting pitching and defense, like I’ve been saying the whole season,” Roth said. “It’s just something we’re going to have to do a better job of locking in from the get-go like we did and have to not feed off of negativity and things like that.

“We had some mistakes that happened throughout the day and it’s just stuff we can’t let happen. You just can’t take a day off, you can’t take a game off, inning, a pitch an at-bat, period.”