File photo by Travis Rosenau Sleepy Eye Junior Legion’s Jon Petermann races home during an East Sub, Sub-State playoff game with Springfield on July 11 at Johnson Park in New Ulm.

SLEEPY EYE — With the one-two punch of Mark Anderson and Brandon Schmitz on the mound this summer, the Sleepy Eye Junior Legion baseball team has put together a standout season.

And the fun isn’t over yet for Sleepy Eye either as the team will take that pitching duo, along with several other reliable arms, steady fielders and solid bats to Ely on Thursday as the 2022 Division II Minnesota State Junior Legion Baseball Tournament begins.

Sleepy Eye will take on Esko at 12:30 p.m. in a first-round game Thursday.

Anderson and Schmitz, two Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s students, haven’t lost a game on the mound yet this season. Anderson is 4-0 with 45 strikeouts and a .28 ERA this season in 25 innings, while Schmitz is 5-0 with 35 strikeouts and a 1.59 ERA in 22 innings of work.

Sleepy Eye head coach Brandon Streich said that both pitchers have been key to the team’s success so far.

“There’s similarities I like that they both have a very strong mentality on the mound and they’re very confident in what they can do, and they trust their teammates, and I think that’s a big part of pitching,” Streich said. “When you know you can attack the zone and trust your defense, and then you have the stuff to mix it up and keep hitters off balance. When you’re confident in those facets, I think it really helps them.”

Catcher Caden Evers, a Sleepy Eye Public student who is hitting .409 with 13 RBIs this summer, said that Anderson and Schmitz are a great combo with different specialties.

“Mark’s more of that guy, he’s going to come at you and he’s going to blow it by you,” Evers said. “He works the fastball around the zone, then he’ll throw a curveball and make guys look dumb. But it makes my job really easy catching for him, and Brandon, too. … Then you go to Schmitz, a guy that’s almost completely opposite. He’ll come and throw five straight curveballs at you, and all of his pitches move, and it’s really great one-two punch with them two.”

Isaac Lendt has also pitched 11 2/3 innings for Sleepy Eye and has a 1.80 ERA and six strikeouts, while Winsten Nienhaus has a .72 ERA in 9 2/3 innings of work. Sleepy Eye has had eight other players pitch this season also, so there’s plenty of pitching to go around.

Sleepy Eye dominated in the playoffs on its way to the state tournament, outscoring opponents 34-2 in the East Sub, Sub-State tourney in New Ulm and 34-2 in the Southwest Sub-State tourney in Pipestone.

“I think our pitching is our engine to our team,” Streich said. “When we get good pitching, we get good hitting. Everybody is kind of in a little bit of a rhythm. You get good pitching, your defense is solid, your hitting’s solid and I think it’s contagious. If you can get your engine going and everything else goes, I think we’re a very hard team to beat. And when you’re clicking on all cylinders like we are right now, we’re a pretty strong team.”

Offensively, Sleepy Eye has eight players hitting over .400 this season. The team’s leading hitter has been St. Marys’ Talan Helget, who carries a team-best .512 batting average and has 14 RBIs.

Helget said that after this same group of players lost in the Second District VFW championship to Mankato and fell a win short of reaching state last summer, the team pushed itself more this year.

“Last year since we fell short, we got that mindset that we just wanted to come back and just give it a shot again and make state,” Helget said.

Austin Uecker, a Sleepy Eye Public student, has been another top hitter on the team with a .439 batting average and 14 RBIs. He agreed with Helget and said the team has had the right amount of confidence this season.

“Just knowing that us coming up short [last year], that’s obviously in the back of our head, and we didn’t want that happening again,” Uecker said. “So I think that helped us push through in the Sub, Sub-State and then the [Sub-State]. And even that, it’s hard going into games knowing that we’re probably going to win, but even like that, we still stayed confident and not just showing up to show up.”

Evers said the team isn’t taking this year’s trip to state for granted.

“It’s awesome,” Evers said. “It’s something you cant take for granted, it’s once in a lifetime sometimes for some people, especially after the way it ended last year, that was really a heartbreaker the way it ended. Coming into this year, we knew what we could be, we knew we could get back there and we proved it. And it was a lot of fun getting there.”

Sleepy Eye was 3-0 in Pipestone before winning the championship and a trip to state after Madelia, its would-be opponents in the title game, forfeited early Wednesday morning while citing a lack of available pitching left.

Streich said that he and his players were disappointed by winning the Sub-State title on a forfeit, but he thinks it will fuel his players more at the state tournament.

“We really wanted to play,” Streich said. “The kids were really upset by that. … They didn’t get that chance to celebrate a championship. And I think that kind of drove them a little bit.”

Uecker said that he’s looking forward to the state tournament and is hoping the team can celebrate a state championship.

“Just ready to get going,” Uecker said. “Kind of wanting that championship celebration that we didn’t get [in Pipestone] sadly. Wanting that for the state tournament, which would be a lot better.”

Other top hitters on the team include Cody Schultz, who has a team-best 17 RBIs to go with a .442 batting average, and Winsten Nienhaus, who is hitting .439 with 11 RBIs. More top hitters with at least 20 at-bats this season for Sleepy Eye include Anderson (.417 BA, 14 RBIs), Marcus Martinez (.417, 11 RBIs), Arian Saenz (.400, 14 RBIs) and Jon Petermann (.393 BA, 12 RBIs).

While the team’s pitching has gotten much of the credit this summer, the team has shown an all-around ability to make things happen on numerous occasions.

“I’d say we’re pretty gritty,” Helget said. “Good baserunning, hard baserunning, good pitching, get the bats going, all that.”

Another notable accomplishment for the team to be proud of is the fact that this was the first year Sleepy Eye has had a junior legion team. And making a state tournament during a program’s first year is far from a common occurrence.

Even with that accomplishment, Evers is hungry for more.

“I think it would look a lot cooler if we come back with that state championship,” Evers said. “It’s something that’s going to be good to look back at first year, but I think it’ll mean a lot more if we come back with what we know we can do.”

In order to take home a state championship, Sleepy Eye will have to take down Esko on Thursday.

“They have three pretty good ballplayers, they were 20-5 in the high school season and they only started one senior,” Streich said of Esko. “I don’t know how many juniors they had, but they have a couple good sophomores that I’m aware of. They’ve got a guy that is 6-3, throws about 85 miles an hour. They’ve got a couple decent pitchers and I’m sure they’ve got a very strong lineup. It looks like they put up a lot of numbers in the high school season, so we’re going to have to bring our A game, simple as that.”

Those unable to make the trek north to Ely to watch Sleepy Eye are invited to tune in to KNUJ online or on the radio.