Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm Legion Gold starting pitcher Kasey Kuck tosses a pitch during Gold’s playoff loss to Jordan Saturday in Sleepy Eye. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

SLEEPY EYE — This past spring, Jordan’s Marshall Mazanec went 3-1 on the mound for Rochester Community College.

On Saturday, the righthanded submarine pitcher allowed just five hits to New Ulm Gold as Jordan eliminated the No. 2 seeded Post 132 4-0 in a Sub-State 2 Legion baseball tournament game.

Mazanec went 8 1/3 innings and fanned just two but held Gold bats in check all game.

Kasey Kuck took the season-ending loss for Gold (19-11). Kuck went eight innings and allowed all four runs on three hits. He struck out five.

Mike Lambrecht and Noah Schmitt each had two hits for Post 3.

Andrew Peters was the only Gold hitter to solve Mazanec as he had three hits, including two doubles and a triple.

“Their pitcher did a really good job for them as did Kasey for us,” Gold coach Jeremy Drexler said. “The first run he gave up (in the fourth inning) was on a walk and a bloop hit. And then we had the wheels fall off in the eighth inning. But you cannot win if you do not score.”

Post 3’s first run in the fourth came when Ryan Friedges led off with a walk, the only walk of the game given up by Kuck.

Mazanec then helped his own cause when he blooped a single into short right field that had Friedges settled at third.

He came home on Lambrecht groundout.

That lead held up as Gold hitters could not mount a scoring threat off of him and his style.

“We have seen a lot of funky pitchers this summer,” Drexler said. “We have seen a lot of side-armers and three-quarters and stuff like that. He did not strike a lot of guys out but we did not put the bat on the ball either.”

New Ulm did have two scoring threats in the game.

One came in the second when Peters led off with a double to left. But he was caught in a run-down on a missed bunt attempt.

And in the seventh, Peters hammered a two-out triple down the leftfield line and followed that with a walk to J.T. Hoffmann. But Mazanec got Brandon Mehlhop to fly out to right to end the threat.

“That is the difference in the game,” Drexler said. “We needed to get clutch two-out hits and we did not get them today.”

Jordan added three runs in the top of the eighth inning with just one ball leaving the infield.

Schmitt led off with an infield single and stole second. Kuck plunked Jack Friedges before an Infield error allowed Jon Draheim to reach first and load the bases.

A fielder’s choice, another infield hit before an Quentin McDermid sacrifice fly scored Draheim.

“I do not know if they hit a ball hard all game,” Drexler said. “Kasey did an excellent job for us. We just did not get him any run support.”