Sages best Rockets thanks to Young's composure, Rawdin's big swings
· Yahoo Sports
Apr. 10—TOLONO — Zeke Young wasn't originally scheduled to start on the mound in the Monticello baseball team's Illini Prairie Conference opener on Thursday at Unity. That start was reserved for Heyden Romano, but he injured his throwing hand earlier in the week and needed to sit out the game.
The short notice was no problem for Young, who said he was going to be ready to pitch regardless. The only problem was the Rockets were ready to hit.
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Tyler Henry drove the first pitch of the bottom of the first inning to the left-field gap for a double. After back-to-back hit-by-pitches and a run-scoring error, Dane Eisenmenger launched a three-run home run over the left-field fence.
"It was a nice start," Unity coach Tom Kimball said. "Scoring four runs against a good team in the first inning, you couldn't start any better than that."
Then, Young settled in, and Monticello's lineup responded to give the Sages a 9-7 road win over their conference rival and move them to 13-0 on the season.
"They've been around a lot of baseball," Monticello coach Chris Jones said. "All year, they've shown that they can grind out at-bats, stick to the course and trust the process, and we got there."
The first key in coming back was Young. He looked like a completely different pitcher after giving up that first-inning homer, retiring 12 of the next 14 batters to keep Unity (6-2) at four runs.
"Every pitch is a new pitch," Young said. "If something bad happens, you just have to keep going and make sure only one bad thing happens in the game."
On top of Young's bounce-back effort, the Sages' bats started rolling. Dawson Gaitros drove in a pair of runs in the second inning to get them on the board, Jake Motsegood added another with a single in the third and Forrest Rawdin gave them the lead three batters later with a two-run single.
Monticello broke open the game in the fifth inning. Rawdin's next at-bat was in the fifth inning with the bases loaded, and he popped a grand slam over the right-field wall to score a ninth unanswered run and push the lead to 9-4.
"I don't even have words for it," Rawdin said of his home run. "I was just ecstatic. I was jumping up and freaking out. I saw my guys jumping out of the dugout. It was lots of fun. We just needed that little, tiny push to get us going, and we were explosive after that."
Rawdin ended the game 2 for 3 with six RBI. Motsegood reached base in all four plate appearances, walking three times to go with his RBI single. Jax Bailey collected two hits, and Young reached base twice to complement his pitching performance. Gaitros pitched the final two innings for the Sages, allowing no hits and one walk, and he drove in a pair of runs at the plate.
The Rockets didn't lie down after that grand slam. Tyler Henry led off the bottom of the fifth with a walk, Coleton Langendorf doubled and Brayden Henry belted a three-run homer to left field to bring Unity within two runs.
Again, Young bounced back and set down the next three batters, ending his day on the mound after five innings.
"Zeke took a punch, but he answered the bell and really did a great job," Jones said. "Maybe didn't expect that punch right out of the gate, but when you're playing a quality program like Unity, it's going to happen. He did a great job keeping his composure and executing pitches from there on out."
The Rockets didn't help themselves on defense.
The pitching staff walked six batters and hit another one, and the defense totaled six errors in the field.
Kimball said he would have expected to get run-ruled doing that against a team as good as Monticello. To stay within striking distance is "a testament to our kids hanging in there" —
Jackson Cheely pitched 1 2/3 innings of one-hit ball in relief to give the Rockets a chance — but they still felt like they beat themselves.
"When we score seven runs, we expect to win," Kimball said. "We just didn't pitch it well, and our defense was atrocious. I can't remember the last time we've played a game and committed six errors. That was the game. You're not going to beat a team like Monticello when you commit six errors and walk a bunch of guys. We're disappointed. We think we're a better team than that. I absolutely loved the way Jackson Cheely came in as a sophomore and gave us a chance to win. He was really impressive, but we're not taking anything away from playing bad baseball. We're too good a program to be satisfied with playing bad baseball."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Monticello has been playing good baseball in recent years, and undefeated starts are becoming a regular occurrence. Two years ago, the Sages won 22 games before their first loss and went on to win a single-season program record with 31 wins. Last season, they posted 30 victories and made it to the Class 2A Elite Eight, beating Unity 3-2 in the sectional final to get there.
It's a program that's built a reputation for consistent success, evident in Jones reaching the 300-win milestone for his career on March 28, and the Sages are shaping up to have another successful run.
"There have been a lot of quality teams come through this program, and they've all set the standard," Jones said. "You can go back to 2014, when coach (Matt) Crook was catching and took us to the super-sectional. It's the pride they have in the program and what everybody else has set in front of them. They just keep putting the work in, and we keep trying to put a good product out here."