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Marshall rallies to take down Junior Gold in UMC

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Junior Legion Gold pitcher Dirk Haynes prepares to deliver a pitch during an Upper Midwest Classic game against Marshall on Friday at Johnson Park in New Ulm.

NEW ULM — After flexing its muscle in its first game of the Upper Midwest Classic Friday, the New Ulm Junior Legion Gold baseball team had things unravel against Marshall in its second game at Johnson Park, falling 10-3.

Junior Gold started the day with a solid 5-3 win over Waconia at Mueller Park, but traveling up the hill to Johnson Park was a different story as errors and struggles from the mound spelled trouble.

Hunter Larson was 2 for 2, while Zach Hubbard was 2 for 3 with two RBIs in Junior Gold’s win over Waconia, a game that saw Collin Forstner earn a complete-game win on the mound. He surrendered six hits and two walks for two earned runs.

But Junior Gold had to turn to three different pitchers against Marshall, and all three of those pitchers put runners on with hit by pitches. New Ulm also committed four costly errors in the loss.

“The bottom line with this game is we had momentum early and then we started getting flat with the way that we carried [ourselves],” Junior Gold head coach Mike Anderson said. “Honestly we had six errors, they had four up on the board, but we had six errors in the field and we hit seven batters. So that alone without counting the walks, we gave them 13 free bags. We’re not going to win very many baseball games playing that way, especially being a junior legion team playing a pretty high-level team that won our conference, that’s the same [pitcher] from the team that won our conference.”

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Junior Legion Gold’s Kyle Albrecht watches what would be his RBI triple in the first inning of an Upper Midwest Classic baseball game against Marshall on Friday at Johnson Park in New Ulm.

That Marshall pitcher was Owen Kesteloot, who bounced back after a shaky opening inning that saw him allow three runs on three hits and a pair of walks. Kesteloot ended up going all seven innings, allowing just one hit after that first inning and finishing with three runs allowed on four hits and three walks. He struck out 10.

“It was more mental,” Kesteloot said of his first-inning struggles. “I was ready to go for that second inning, but I gave up three hits and after that, I was just locked in.”

He walked the leadoff hitter in the first and second innings, but he didn’t allow another hit until Zach Hubbard’s ground-ball single to left in the fifth.

New Ulm starting pitcher Dirk Haynes escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first and his team rewarded him for it in the bottom of the inning for three runs.

After Hubbard’s leadoff walk, Haynes dropped down a sac bunt to move Hubbard to second. Kyle Albrecht then tripled to right to score Hubbard before Ryan Rathmann reached on an infield single. Kesteloot got his first punchout of the game after that single, but Cohen Domeier bounced a two-run single into left-center to put New Ulm up 3-0.

Marshall got a pair of runs back in the second on an RBI single from Andrew Stelter and a throwing error that scored Stelter. Braxton Koster, who reached on a leadoff double off the fence in the fourth, scored the tying run on what looked to be a groundout by Josh Kraft was thrown away to first for an error.

Haynes left the mound in the fourth after three innings complete, allowing three runs on four hits and three walks. He struck out two and hit three batters with pitches. Domeier relieved Haynes and ended up with 2 2/3 innings of work, allowing five hits and a walk for four runs while striking out one.

Ayden Gostonczik pitched the remaining 1 1/3 inning for New Ulm, allowing one run on one hit and two walks while striking out one.

Marshall added another run in the fifth on an RBI double by Coby Brownlee and went up 10-3 in the sixth in a four-hit, two-error inning. An RBi single to left by Levi Maeyaert concluded the scoring in the seventh.

“The bottom line is, and I told the boys before we started this game is that we can be the best junior legion team in the state, and I feel that, I’m not just blowing smoke by saying that,” Anderson said. “But how we do that is how we carry ourselves and how our body language is, and I feel like we didn’t do the best job of that in this game.”

Koster ended up leading Marshall at the plate against New Ulm, going 2 for 3 with two runs scored and two walks, while Maeyaert was 2 for 5 with two RBIs, Kraft was 2 for 4 with two runs scored and Thor was 2 for 5. Marshall’s Liam Kruse, Deagan Maurice and Ashton Blomberg were each hit by pitch twice in the game.

Marshall fell 12-3 to Sleepy Eye earlier in the day.

Marshall finishes up pool play in the tournament at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in Essig against Waconia, while New Ulm finishes pool play with a 10 a.m. game against Sleepy Eye at Mueller Park on Saturday.

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