Another late-inning rally carries Pilgrims
DUNLAP — Plymouth’s Pilgrims rode a six-run fifth inning outburst to a 10-4 NLC win on the road at Concord but to say the least, the late innings continue to be an adventure.
“That’s exactly what was going through my head too but we were able to weather the storm,” said Plymouth head coach Ryan Wolfe. “That’s what I told him (Skylar Aker) is that we just have to go out and pitch. We can’t give them any more free bases. They gave us some help there too but I’ll take whatever we can get in a situation like that. We weathered the storm and kept putting runs up.”
Monday the Pilgrims scored six in the bottom of the sixth to take a comeback win over Northridge. Wednesday it was smooth sailing at Mishawaka until a Caveman six-run fifth forced an 11 inning marathon before nine Plymouth runs sealed a win.
Friday night the fifth inning storm started as a red storm with Plymouth taking advantage of three walks, a hit batter, a pair of singles, and a big three-run double by Matt Dobuck giving the Pilgrims six runs off of Concord reliever Bryson Schrock to break the game open. Plymouth starter Skylar Aker was working on a two-hit shutout.
Concord would answer right back in their half of the inning taking advantage of two errors and a walk to grab three back, but a couple of Concord baserunning errors kept it from being a lot worse for the Pilgrims.
Aker was rock solid taking the complete-game win scattering eight hits and striking out a pair of hitters, more importantly making big pitches to get himself out of any Concord threat.
“We threw a bullpen during the week and went back to some things,” said Wolfe. “I think he (Aker) was just trying to do too much out there, trying to throw it by people. He got a lot of ground balls tonight with a lot of offspeed stuff. Just get it over instead of trying to blow it by people.”
“I thought he mixed his pitches well and was right around the plate,” said Wolfe. “We know he can do that and that’s what we have to have out of him.”
In a 97 pitch outing, Aker threw 61 of those for strikes and spent most of the night ahead in the count.
It was also a different approach for the Pilgrims playing errorless ball until the fateful fifth inning.
“After the games when we went on our skid we talked about getting back to not letting things bother us and weathering storms,” said Wolfe. “We are going to get in jams and situations and we just need to keep pushing through them and putting runs on the board.”
“When we left all those guys on early I thought it was going to be another one of those games but we got through it and kept putting up runs,” he said. “When you get some early and then can score some more late it’s going to help you win a lot of ball games.”
Plymouth stranded 10 runners in the game but seven of those came in the first three innings.
Matt Dobuck continues to be a run producer at the plate with a three-run double as part of the six-run fifth. Aker helped himself at the plate with a pair of hits and an RBI. Ivan
Winkle also had a double for the Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims even their season record at 7-7 and move to 4-5 in NLC play and have a big day of baseball at Bill Nixon Field today as the Pilgrims host their annual tourney.
Plymouth will kick off the day of games taking on Hamilton SE at 11 a.m. Penn will take on Carroll in a game slated to start at 1:30 p.m. The losers will return for a 4 p.m game with the championship scheduled for 6:30 p.m. •PLYMOUTH 10, CONCORD 4 at Concord
Plymouth 0 1 0 1 6 1 1 10-7-3 Concord 0 0 0 0 3 1 0 4-8-3 WP — Aker. LP — Cain. 2B — Dobuck (P), Winkle (P), Swineheart (C).