Leadoff walks, the bane of pitchers everywhere, sabotaged any prospect of victory for De Soto SMCI in a frustrating 7-3 loss to the Metro East Bears on Saturday in De Soto’s second game of the tournament.
De Soto, coming off a 9-7 setback against the Charleston Squirrels on Friday, the first day of the tournament, had early leads of 1-0 and 2-1, scoring on sacrifice flies by Ryan Almany and Ryan McLaughlin. But SMCI starting pitcher Cole Valle handed the lead back by walking Chance Foss to start the bottom of the fourth inning and yielding a run-scoring single by Tate Wargo that tied the game 2-2.
De Soto reclaimed the advantage at 3-2 after Seth Terry doubled to lead off the fifth and scored on a popout. But in the bottom half, SMCI reliever Logan Manson walked the first two Bears batters and gave way to Nick Schmidt on the mound. Metro East plated one run on Joel Quirin’s double and two more on a single by Kade Burns for a 5-3 lead.
The pattern repeated again in the sixth when the first two Bears batters walked and Quirin chased them home with a double to finish the scoring. The four-run cushion was all Metro East starting pitcher Brandon Hampton needed to finish the job. The left-hander went seven innings and scattered four hits while striking out six.
The Bears, with players from such towns as Edwardsville, Alton, Bethalto and Roxana, went on to claim the tournament championship, winning all five of their games to improve to 14-4.
For SMCI (2-12), it was their fifth loss in a row, and the losing skid reached six later in the day with a 13-4 loss to Danville. De Soto has seen opponents score double-digit runs in seven of the team’s 12 losses so far.
“Leadoff walks, that’s killed us all year,” De Soto manager Sean Wiley said. “I don’t know how true the stat is, but I’d say 80 percent of the time they score. We give up a lot of runs that aren’t necessary. We drop a fly ball after we give up a leadoff walk, and we just shoot ourselves in the foot.”
Sometimes the pitching, which was a major liability at the start of the season, hasn’t been entirely to blame. On June 14, SMCI lost a tough 3-2 decision to host Washington, squandering a good showing by starting hurler Dylan Blyzes. He didn’t allow a hit in four and one-third innings but got into some trouble by walking five batters. De Soto led 2-0 going into the fifth inning but committed three errors and Washington nicked losing hurler Brett Gibbs for two runs on three hits in one and one-third innings. Gibbs was making one of his first pitching appearances of the season, coming off arm surgery over the winter.
Wiley noted that the loss to Metro East was the first game in the losing streak that his team actually lost rather than gave away with mistakes and lack of timely hitting.
“It’s just frustrating,” he said. “Our ability is there, our talent is there. We’ve been getting better pitching, and we got (it) through four innings (today), and we just fell apart. We were missing some big hits with runners in scoring position; same old story (there).
“We’ve got to stick with the process and keep going through it until things turn. Eventually, if we do the small things, the big things are going to follow. We’ll see if we can get all three phases of the game going in the same direction. A lot of our guys are frustrated and they’re sick of it. Hopefully we can get it turned around.”