HOPE — Hauser’s Sam Miller had all weekend to think about how he would finish his first-inning at bat in Monday’s rain-delayed Mid-Hoosier Conference battle with Edinburgh.
Miller had a 3-2 count with the bases loaded and nobody out and the Jets leading 1-0 when play was suspended because of rain on Friday. When the game resumed on Monday, Miller smacked a two-run double off Gabe Bennett, and Class A No. 10 Hauser scored 12 times in the first inning on its way to a 13-1, five-inning victory.
“I had plenty of time to think about anything I could do,” Miller said. “I figured it was going to be a first-pitch fastball. He didn’t want to start with walking somebody. It was an interesting start to this game, but I could say it ended up well.”
The Jets (12-7, 6-1) also got an RBI-sacrifice fly from Koby Johnson, a two-run single from Levi Gollmer, RBI-singles from Landon Asher and Aaron Rork in the first. Miller added an RBI-sacrifice fly in his second at bat of the inning.
“We haven’t hit like that in awhile,” Miller said. “We finally put a bat on a ball, and that’s what happens.”
That pleased Hauser coach Nate Long.
“Where we left off, we were in a pretty good spot with the bases loaded, so I told my guys to be aggressive,” Long said. “That’s the way we tell them to be all the time, so it worked out good for us.”
After the Jets jumped out to that 12-0 lead, each team plated only one run after that. The Lancers’ tally came in the second when Jarrett Turner and Caleb Turner drew two-out walks and advanced on a wild pitch and a passed ball.
Hauser scored its final run off Bennett in the second on an RBI-sacrifice fly from Rork.
“The freshman we threw early on, I think the nerves got to him,” Edinburgh coach Dennis Smith said. “But I wanted to pitch him in a big game because he’s somebody that we’re going to be using in the future, and he’s one of the kids that I truly believe is going to be a good player. He has to learn to settle in and start throwing strikes and not worry about what’s going on behind him.”
Ian Buchanan pitched a scoreless third and fourth for Edinburgh (0-14, 0-10).
Asher went 3 for 4 for the Jets. Miller went 2 for 2 with two RBIs, and Rork went 2 for 3 with three RBIs.
Clayton West pitched the first inning on Friday for Hauser, and Alex Pattingill threw the final four innings on Monday. They combined on a two-hitter.
“Pattingill came in and threw strikes and did a good job,” Long said. “We need to get better at continuing to score every inning. That’s our goal as a team — to try to put runs up every inning and put the pressure on them — and we need to do a better job of that.”
On the other side, the Lancers are looking to avoid that one big inning that has haunted them all season.
“That’s been our Achilles heel the last 13 games — we have one big inning where we have three or four errors, and we allow a bunch of runs, and then we’re always playing from behind,” Smith said. “We need to learn to buckle down and get the outs that we need.
“We’re getting there,” he added. “We’re making tons of progress. I truly think we’re going to be a tough out in the sectional. It’s just having last year off, coming back and playing one game, then we’re shut down for two weeks (because of quarantine) and then we’re jumping back into it, I think it’s really rocked our momentum a little bit.”
