Warriors manufacture a Championship
By Lenny Sementi
Tuscola’s head baseball coach Adam Carver played the role of puppet master this past Saturday as the Warriors advanced to the Elite Eight with a 1-0 victory over St. Joseph-Ogden in the Bloomington Central Catholic Sectional. The first year skipper pulled all the right strings in the bottom of the seventh to manufacture the lone run of the game.
Ryan Bartley broke up a six-inning no hit gem setting the table for the Warriors in their final at bat of regulation with a lead off single down the first baseline. The junior right fielder gave way to pinch runner Michael Ludwig on the base paths. Ludwig moved to second with one gone on a perfectly executed sac bunt by Logan Tabeling and then scored on a two out walk-off single past the short stop by Lucas Kresin setting the Warrior dog pile on the junior catcher in motion.
“I was just looking for anything to put the ball into play,” Lucas Kresin said. “I didn’t care how, I just wanted SJO have to make a play.”
“Their kid threw a great game, our guys needed to have a better approach at the plate than we did,” commented Carver. “They went away from what’s got us this far for the most part. Lucas has a clutch factor about him, so I knew when Logan got that bunt down, Lucas was going to come through for us.”
Carver’s crew moved to 30-2 on the year collecting their second consecutive Class 2A sectional championship with a strong performance on the mound by Logan Tabeling and a solid defensive effort behind the junior. The coach leaned on Tabeling’s right arm for seven innings of work. ending his day one pitch short of the maximum of 115 pitches, giving up just four hits and three walks while striking out 14. He fanned two in every frame but one and struck out the side in the top seventh setting up the fireworks in the bottom half. No K’s were bigger than the final out of a bases loaded jam in the second stanza.
“Logan is a competitor,” stated Kresin the catcher. “It seems that when people get on base he gets even nastier, and that’s what happened Saturday. We have a good chemistry together, because we have been together so long.”
The full story can be found in the Wednesday, May 29 edition of The Tuscola Journal.