Cleveland blanks MVL in Section 2A baseball playoffs
CLEVELAND — Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s bats made plenty of contact with the ball against Cleveland, but it unfortunately only led to three hits.
The Chargers fell to the Clippers 6-0 in a first round Section 2A playoff baseball game on Friday.
With the loss, MVL (11-8) is eliminated from the playoffs.
Brandon Seitz picked up the win for the Clippers (13-5) with seven solid innings pitched. He allowed just the three hits and no walks.
Seitz recorded one strikeout and his defense was there for him on more than one occasion.
MVL coach John Gunderson said that trouble finding gaps and hitting for power ultimately led to the defeat.
“We just had some challenges at the plate,” Gunderson said. “We were putting the bat on the ball, just not nearly hit hard enough. We did make it easy on the defense there and just couldn’t string enough hits together.”
Nick Fischer suffered the loss for the Chargers with four innings of six-hit ball and four runs allowed. He struck out seven batters, while walking five.
Cleveland scored its first run in the third inning on an RBI hit by Josh Baker. It added three additional runs the next inning, led by a two-run double from Danny McCabe.
Cleveland collected just one hit against MVL’s Alec Gratz in the sixth inning, but they added two runs to further the lead.
Nick Fischer was 2 for 3 for MVL with two doubles, while AJ Buboltz added a single on a 1-for-3 day at the plate.
“We know what type of team we are,” Gunderson said. “We are a very good baseball team that lost today. That’s something that we can look back on to say ‘Yeah, we played well, we just didn’t have it today with the single elimination.’ There are a lot of good baseball teams that will be going home today — and at the same time — I’m proud of our guys. We’d like to come home with the win here of course, but hats off to the Clippers. They played a great game today.”
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