JAMES WOOD BASEBALL KNOCKS OFF MILLBROOK

May 12, 2012
By GREG BRILL
Special to The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — Coaches like to talk about how winning is contagious, and it looks like the James Wood baseball team has caught on with this adage pretty well.

Keeping up their red-hot play in May, the Colonels stunned second-place Millbrook 6-4 on Friday night and moved into sole possession of third place in the Northwestern District.

A five-run third inning put James Wood (10-9, 5-6 in the district) ahead for good, and Millbrook (14-5, 7-4) lost only its second home game of the season. The other defeat also came at the hands of the Colonels, 5-2 back on March 27.

“It was very uncharacteristic of how we’ve been playing,” said Millbrook coach Brian Burke, whose squad had won 11 of its last 12 before Friday. “James Wood came out and did what they needed to do to win the game. It just comes down to execution tonight, and they wanted it more than us.”

The Colonels definitely looked like the team with more fire under their feet. In extending its season-best win streak to four, James Wood backed its pitchers with outstanding play in the field and got just enough clutch hitting to earn the season series (2-1) with Millbrook. “It’s really come together the last few games and we’re just trying to play to our potential like coach wants us to do,” said James Wood senior third baseman Jordan Iden, who had two hits and two RBIs in the win. “We got rolling in the third inning, got a few base hits, and everything was falling for us.

“We’re really developing better as a team late in the season — which is what you really want.”

Coming on the heels of a crucial win at home on Senior Night against Skyline on Thursday, the Colonels moved ahead of the Hawks (8-10, 4-6) in the standings and control their destiny. While James Wood has last-place Handley (2-16, 1-10) left to play, Skyline must face regular-season champ Sherando (today) and Millbrook (Monday) to close its schedule.

As long as they avoid a tie in the standings with Skyline (who won the season series 2-1 with James Wood), the Colonels will hold onto the third seed and face Millbrook for the fourth time next Saturday in the district semifinal round.

Having something to play for has not been lost on anyone in the James Wood dugout.

“It’s a great win against a quality team — they put it on us last time and beat us 12-0 [on April 17],” James Wood coach Jared Mounts said. “But we’ve beat them now two out of three. Our guys came in, and they’re playing well as a team, they’re battling and they don’t quit, and I’m just really proud of them.”

Millbrook controlled the first two innings. Lane Spinks blooped a two-out single to center in the first, in which Kyle Hevener got a rare bad read on, to send the Pioneers into an early lead, and Spinks got off to a good start on the mound by keeping the Colonels off the board.

To begin the third, James Wood made plenty of contributions at the plate to surge ahead. And one boot in the infield by the Pioneers offered a big assist.

A two-run single by Russell Repasky with one out tied the game, but Scott Zerull followed with a potential inning-ending double play grounder to short. The grounder was bobbled then thrown away, and everyone was safe.

A ground out to second by Nick Goode drove in the go-ahead run before Iden sent a single up the middle to plate two more for a 5-2 lead and finish Spinks’ stint on the mound.

Millbrook had five errors on the night, but only one came in James Wood’s big third inning, and it led to three unearned runs scored by the Colonels.

From there, James Wood did get quality innings from a trio of pitchers and its defense was sparkling, to say the least. The Colonels had one error.

Just over a week ago, Dan Malsch had pitched less than six innings on the season. The junior pitched into the fifth against the Northwestern’s top

scoring team — Millbrook entered Friday averaging 8.7 runs and had scored at least 10 runs in 10 games this season — and effectively used three pitches for strikes to tame the Pioneers.

Malsch (2-1) would gain his first win as a starter against Millbrook,

allowing no earned runs after the first before giving up a two-out, run-scoring single to Jeremiah Eaton in the fifth, which cut James Wood’s lead to 5-4.

Following Malsch, Dakota Orndorff got out of the fifth when Goode ranged far to his left at short and made a diving stab to rob Spinks of a hit with a runner on second.

The Colonels went to the bullpen again after Orndorff gave up a two-out, four-pitch walk to nine-hole batter Bruce Keenan in the sixth and brought on Addison Barber, who pitched two innings on Thursday and got the win in relief.

Needing just one pitch to get Jaye to hit a soft liner to short to end the inning, Barber followed with a 1-2-3 seventh — the only time in the game that either team went in order — to notch his first save.

“All the guys pounded the strike zone,” Stiles said. “I don’t think we got that many strikeouts [three]. It was all about how the defense played behind them, and we’ve improved there a lot.”

Goode (2 for 4, two RBIs) provided an insurance run in the sixth with his single to score Zach Webster.

“It’s good to win, because we’ve been playing behind .500 all year, and we started chipping away at that,” Mounts said. “Right now, we can do no worse than .500 and if we go out and play well on Monday, we can have a winning record. It’s not how you start out, it’s how you finish."

Nick Strosnyder had two hits to lead Millbrook. Laith Abunasser followed Spinks (4-3) and allowed just one earned run and two hits to finish up for the Pioneers.