Bats boost
Chippewas past Portagers
By DYLAN SAVELA
Manistee News Advocate Sports Writer
Published: Thursday, May 19, 2011
ONEKAMA — Consistency through the order
has been Manistee’s focus of late, and Thursday’s lopsided affair
proved those labors fruitful.
The Chippewas cruised to a 17-1 victory over Onekama in five innings
with the help of big bats all the way around.
“I told them what I wanted to see today was the five through nine
hitters change their approach at the plate and I thought that was
much better,” Manistee coach Troy Nezki said. “Our top of the order
has been hitting the ball hard and hitting the ball well, and we’ve
got to get guys behind them doing the same.”
Of Manistee’s 11 hits in the contest, seven came from the slots
Nezki had in mind. "It's about being more patient, not letting their
first swing turn into something that"s just a dribbler, knowing two
strikes they've got to shorten it us and kind of know what type of
pitch they’re looking for,” he said. “We’ve been having a lot of
off-the-handle- type first hits lately, and there’s really no need.
I mean, if you have two strikes on you, you’re protecting and you do
what you can, but we need to have our first swings be something we
hit hard. I saw big improvements with that from a lot of guys
today.”
The Chippewas scored runs in each inning, including a three-run
first, six-run third and five-run fifth to cushion the lead. Pitcher
Mason Swidorski kept the Portagers at bay with a solid start, in
which he threw seven strikeouts allowing just one run on two hits.
“Mason did a great job throwing strikes,” Nezki said. “He was
working on holding runners on, working on changing up delivery to
the plate, and those are the types of things we wanted to do today.
We wanted to work on a lot of that stuff you can’t get as much out
of in practice.”
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For Onekama, the Portagers knew playing a
Division 3 opponent would be a challenge. But despite trailing most of
the way, coach John Neph said it’s part of his young team’s learning
experience.
“Obviously, it’s hard to look up and see 17-1, but they just hit it, hit
it hard and hit it often,” he said. “When a team’s just hitting the ball
that well, you can’t do much with that.
“I told the guys after the game, I felt like this was part of the
learning process. Every time you play you see some things that work and
you also see the things you definitely still need to work on,” he added.
“Looking at the schedule, we knew this would be a tough contest coming
in. We wanted to play as hard as we can, see what happens, and try to
learn from it. Every week we’ve gotten better as the season has gone on,
but today Manistee really pounded the baseball.
“To see the quality pitching we saw tonight helps us, because it’s the
sort of stuff we’ll see down the road. Even though we didn’t get a lot
of productivity against it, I think it helps the young guys to kind of
see that.”
Onekama’s Stephen Verrett had a hit and an RBI with two strikeouts in a
relief pitching effort on the day while Joe Eno knocked a hit.
At the plate for Manistee, Jalen Bigalke batted 2-for-3 with three RBIs,
Jared Knapp was 2-for-3 with two RBIs, Matt Tomaszewski was 2-for-3,
Swidorski batted 1-for-4 and batted in a pair of runs, Dustin Simmons,
Tyler Sievert and Brennan O’Keefe each had a hit and an RBI, Brandon
Dooley batted 1-for-2 and Derek Glauch had an RBI.
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