Cothron catching on
By Lenny Sementi
Mother nature is on fire forcing numerous cancellations as of late, but that hasn’t affected Tuscola baseball’s Haden Cothron.
The senior raised his batting average more than 50 points in the past two weeks, delivered six RBI’s, and hit a pair of homeruns. One of those was on Monday, April 29 in a 15-1 victory over Shelbyville. It was the only game head coach Adam Carver’s squad would get in during the rainy week, and his offense made the most of it pounding out 18 hits while collecting their 22nd win of the season.
“Haden is definitely starting to come around in games,” stated coach Carver. “He has always taken great batting practice, and now it’s transferring over to live at-bats.”
Junior ace Logan Tabeling took the hill on the road for Coach Carver, striking out 11 in five innings of action, giving up just one hit and a walk. Nate Koester entered in the sixth and scattered three hits and a walk out over two innings of work but allowed none to cross the dish setting down the final three in order.
“The long lay off shouldn’t have any impact on our arms, if anything, a the rest on our arms will do us some good heading in to the postseason,” Carver commented.
Offensively the Warriors put seven players in all in the multi-hit column with junior Lucas Kresin leading the charge. Kresin reached safely 3 of the 5 times he stepped to the plate that included a pair of doubles and three runs scored. Joining him with multiple hits were Max Wyninger, Ryan Bartley, Brayden VonLanken, Will Little, Cade Kresin, and Cothron. C. Kresin was tops in the RBI department adding four to his stat sheet that included a two RBI double. Little joined the double parade also banging out a pair of the two baggers.
“I like where our offense is headed,” the coach said. “Everybody has bought in to the fact that we are going to have to use all parts of the field to be a successful hitting team, once we shore up our base running and clean up a few mistakes on defense, I really like what we’ve got.”
Wyninger notched two RBI’s and got the ball rolling with a single in the top of the second that pushed two across. Cothron then chased the junior DH home with a two-run dinger over the left center field fence making it 5-0 Warriors. Back-to-back doubles by L. Kresin and Little plated one and a single by C. Kresin drove in another in the fourth to push the lead to 7-0. Shelbyville followed with a double of their own in the bottom half and scored before Tabeling fanned the final two to end the threat.
The full story can be found in the Wednesday, May 8, 2019 edition of The Tuscola Journal.