NEW ULM — If you were at the Minnesota Valley Lutheran baseball game Monday afternoon against Wabasso, you saw a Chargers team do a lot of things right and not a lot wrong.

And that has been the key for the Chargers as they remained atop the Tomahawk Conference with a 7-3 win over Wabasso and won their ninth game of the season against just one loss.

This is not a team that is going to beat you by consistently pounding the ball over the park.

But they are going to defeat you slowly and methodically. You may not even see it coming.

Take Monday’s game against a very good Wabasso team that came in with a 5-2 record.

The Rabbits jumped out to a fast 2-0 lead over MVL in the top of the first inning and after Wabasso pitcher Carter Benz fanned the first three Chargers’ hitters of the game, it was not the start that MVL wanted.

But the Chargers came back in a sneaky way.

They got on base without getting the ball out of the infield in the second inning using an infield error, a stolen base, a walk and two infield groundouts to score two runs to tie the game.

After a two-run fourth inning by the Chargers, they became sneaky again in the fifth when they scored two more runs, again without getting the ball out of the infield. In fact, without a hit using two walks, a strikeout in which the Wabasso catcher could not handle a swinging third strike in the dirt. An ensuing throwing error scored a run before the only ball put in play that inning resulted in a fielder’s choice that scored the second run of the inning.

The first six runs in in the Chargers’ 7-3 win came as a direct result of three hits with only two — a leadoff single by Luke Thompson and a two-out triple from Reed Selvey, both in the fourth inning — getting out of the infield.

Baseball analytics call it “manufacturing runs” or “productive outs”.

On Monday, it was a way to win.