SMCC baseball bests Sandusky, 8-4

SANDUSKY — Getting five runs in the first inning didn't necessarily settle Cullen Dillard. The St. Mary Central Catholic freshman baseball pitcher was making his first appearance on the mound Saturday, and the support was nice. "Cullen is a gamer," SMCC coach Ryan Myers said. "I don't think it mattered if it was a 0-0 game going into the seventh or an 8-4 ball game. He was going to try to pitch us to a victory because he is that type of that kid. To have that as a true freshman is an excellent characteristic." Dillard gave the Panthers six strong innings, helping SMCC top crosstown rival Sandusky 8-4 in non-league action at Dorn Park. "We had a difficult week at the plate," Myers said. "It was great to see how the kids responded, especially in a game like this against a team like Sandusky who has been playing extremely well. The emphasis was on starting fast. "Once we got that lead, we had to play with the lead. That's something we've taken a lot of pride in so far this season." The Panthers (6-2) jumped ahead early. With one out, Cayden Wikel reached on an error before going to second on a wild pitch and stealing third. A ball hit by Dillard was fielded, but the play went home with Wikel sliding under the tag for a 1-0 lead. Reid Wikel and Austin Gill followed with singles to load the bases before another ball hit — this time hit by Brayden Gill — was fielded and thrown home. Dillard was safe, pushing the advantage to 2-0. Grant Swain followed with a run-scoring single and a bases-loaded walk to Leo Will made it 4-0. After batting through the lineup, Blake Finneran reached on an error, extending the lead to 5-0. "Five runs spotted to a team, whoever it is, is tough to try to bounce back from," Sandusky coach Zack Moots said. "We drop a ball in the outfield and had a couple missed groundballs in the infield. I couldn't say it more to (pitcher) Ja'Syre (Moore) today that he did absolutely what we wanted him to do all day long. He got the popups and groundballs right to guys. "We just did not play smart, fundamental baseball today. That's on everybody." That gave Dillard enough of a cushion to get work done on the mound. He breezed through the Sandusky (6-4) lineup in the first two innings. In the third, the Blue Streaks got on the board as Dennarius Walk roped a RBI double to score Amaree Mack, who was hit by a pitch. The trailing runner was thrown out at home on the play, ending the frame. SMCC responded in the bottom of the fourth. Reid Wikel and Austin Gill singled before Brayden Gill's single scored a run. The Panthers added a second run when Austin Gill scored on a wild pitch. Sandusky scored twice in the fifth and once in the sixth. Dale Johnson had a pair of doubles for the Blue Streaks to go with Walk's poke in the third. "There were some nice shots and we had some nice hits," Moots said. "Their centerfielder made a few good plays on us. We didn't have a ton of strikeouts. We were putting it in play, but they made plays." Reid Wikel and Austin Gill each finished with three hits. "We experimented a little bit today," Myers said. "We pulled out the advanced statistics (Friday) on the bus to figure out what we need to do differently. One of our big focuses was batting average with runners in scoring position. We kind of re-arranged the lineup and that's how we found Cullen in the No. 3 spot because he's one of our biggest on-base percentage guys. "We wanted to give Reid more opportunities to drive runs in and Austin has been swinging a hot bat too." Sandusky was hurt by three errors in the field plus mental mistakes that cost the Blue Streaks chances to get out of innings. "We have to get back to hitting the ball and seeing the ball well," said Moots after his team lost its fourth game in five tries. "We have to have better approaches. We had some good hitters counts a handful of times, but we'd swing at a bad pitch and hit a weak groundball or a popup. We have to be better. "To play the teams we're going to start playing more and more, we've got to be better. " Dillard struck out four in his six innings of work. Eli Dinsmore pitched a scoreless seventh inning to finish off the win for SMCC. "Sandusky was playing extremely good baseball," Myers said. "It's always good to be able to compete with schools five times our size. It's going to look real good when we take it to the district meeting here in a couple weeks." The Panthers have a big week ahead, starting with Monday's Sandusky Bay Conference River Division home game against Gibsonburg. Then, SMCC hosts state-ranked Tiffin Calvert on Tuesday and Hopewell-Loudon on Wednesday. "The big thing to start the season was to get off to a faster start than we did last year," Myers said. "We had the six-game win streak last year where we were able to beat Tiffin Calvert, but we found ourselves playing from behind because we didn't have a winning record at that time. The emphasis this year was to start off better. "We have a certain number of games in mind that we want to be able to win, and in order to do that, getting off to a good start was key." Sandusky 001 021 0 - 4 6 3SMCC 500 210 X - 8 10 1 WP: Dillard (1-0). LP: Moore 2B: (S) Johnson 2, Walk