Photo by Jake McNeill/Marshall Independent New Ulm Junior Legion Gold’s Ryan Rathmann applies a tag at second and looks to the umpire for the call during a Junior Legion Sub-State G Baseball Tournament game against Hutchinson on Wednesday afternoon at Legion Field in Marshall.

By Jake McNeill

jmcneill@marshallindependent.com

MARSHALL — The top-seeded New Ulm junior legion baseball team had its Substate G Tournament opener against No. 9 Tri-City United postponed from Tuesday night due to thunderstorms.

When the time came to play, New Ulm’s bats were ready to rain down runs on their opponents. New Ulm decisively defeated TCU 11-1 in six innings to open tournament play and then battled back from an early deficit against No. 5 Hutchinson for a 12-5 win, finishing their first day of play undefeated.

“[Tight games such as the one against Hutchinson] are tremendous and they’re going to pay off dividends in the long run throughout their careers and their lives,” manager Mike Anderson said. “Honestly, baseball can be the single biggest self-esteem-destroying sport in the world by design. You can fail over and over again, and be successful three out of 10 times and you’re considered good.

“I feel like with this one here, it showed us that we have two things: one, we have to keep our compete-level high if we want to win games. And two, if we do get down, we’re never out of the game.”

Game 1

No. 1 New Ulm 11,

No. 9 TCU 1 (6 inn.)

New Ulm starting pitcher Caden Briggs shut out TCU for the final five innings of his six-inning start. Despite allowing a first-inning unearned run, he settled down to limit TCU to six hits and a pair of walks while striking out five batters.

New Ulm matched TCU’s first-inning run and then pulled away with two more runs in each of the next two frames. After scoring one run in the fourth and four in the fifth, New Ulm sealed the mercy-rule win with an RBI single from Ryan Rathmann in the sixth.

Rathmann was one of three New Ulm batters to go 3 of 4 at the plate on the day, along with Tanner Backer and Cohen Domeier. His two RBIs also tied Hunter Larson for a team-high behind Backer’s four.

Larson, Dirk Haynes, Parker Neubauer and Kyle Albrecht each recorded a pair of hits on the day, and Albrecht had a double to account for New Ulm’s lone extra-base hit.

Game 2

No. 1 New Ulm 12,

No. 5 Hutchinson 5

New Ulm overcame an early deficit in its second-round substrate matchup against No. 5 Hutchinson on Wednesday, scoring eight of the game’s final nine runs to claim a 12-6 victory.

“The resiliency of this group is amazing,” New Ulm manager Mike Anderson said. “It’s been the same MO all year. There have been several times when we were up in Alexandria, we were playing in our final pool game and we got punched in the face pretty hard… They just don’t quit. They don’t stop fighting and they don’t have give-up to them. We’re not loaded with a bunch of high-end athletes that run 4.4, 4.5 40s [-yard dashes], but we’ve got a bunch of kids that play really hard and grind.”

Heading into the bottom of the fourth, New Ulm faced a 5-4 deficit. Yet, things turned around quickly for the tournament’s top-seeded team. Kyle Albrecht and Elliot Schabert singled to put two runners on when Tanner Backer stepped up to the plate with two outs. Backer then hit a double into center field to score one runner and knot the game up at five runs apiece.

The New Ulm rally continued when Ryan Rathmann hit a grounder to short, forcing a Hutchinson error and scoring the go-ahead run. Hunter Larson then singled in Backer and a pickoff error scored Rathmann to make the score 8-5.

Dirk Haynes was hit by a pitch to put runners on the corners and an RBI single from Zach Hubbard, an RBI double from Cohen Domeier and a two-run single from Kyle Albrecht made the score 12-5 after New Ulm finished the inning with eight runs after the two-out mark.

Prior to New Ulm’s bottom-of-the-fourth rally, Hutchinson had just taken the lead in the top of the frame. Hudson Lien and Ethan Schlueter singled consecutively to start the inning when Brenden Ziegler came up to the plate. Zeigler battled his way through a 10-pitch at-bat, including five foul balls, before hitting a ball to straightaway center. The New Ulm center fielder attempted to dive for the ball but his glove was inches shy, allowing the ball to bounce past his outstretched mitt and allowing the Hutchinson runners to score to make it a one-run game.

After Howie Smith reached on an error, Griffin Hutchins lined a ball into left-center that glanced off the edge of a New Ulm outfielder’s glove, driving in another run to prompt a New Ulm pitching change with two runners on and no outs.

Once Ayden Gostonczik took the hill, the Hutchinson bats quickly went quiet. He got out of the inning with a line out and a double play, allowing just one of his inherited runners to score. He finished the game with the victory, allowing just three hits and no walks over four innings on the mound. He also struck out four batters and the lone run he allowed was an unearned run in the sixth.

“I couldn’t be more proud of Ayden Gostonczik. That’s really his longest outing he’s had all year. He came in in a tough spot in a tough way but he came in and he settled the game down,” Anderson said. “If I’m being unfiltered, I kind of chewed on him because I felt like we were flat and it didn’t look like we really wanted to be here and we didn’t bring a championship-level effort to those first few innings.”

Albrecht led New Ulm offensively with three hits, three RBIs and a walk in three at-bats on the day. Also factoring in as major contributors, Zach Hubbard had a pair of hits and a pair of walks while Schabert had a double and a single.

New Ulm started out its second game of the day with a bang, going off for three runs in the first inning. After ending the top of the frame with a 6-3 double play, New Ulm got a Zach Hubbard single and a Kyle Albrecht walk to put two runners on with one out. Ethan Schabert opened the scoring with an RBI double to drive in Hubbard.

After Parker Neubauer was walked to load up the bases and two more walks to Tanner Backer and Hunter Larson forced in another pair of runs to give New Ulm three runs of breathing room.

New Ulm started the game out with a bang with a three-run first inning. Hubbard singled and Albrecht walked to start the frame and Schabert opened the scoring with an RBI double to put runners on the corners. After Neubauer was hit by a pitch, Backer walked to force in another run and Larson walked with two outs to make the score 3-0.

Hutchinson got a run back in the top of the second, courtesy of a Schlueter walk and a pair of wild pitches. Yet, New Ulm got it right back in the bottom of the frame. Hubbard walked and advanced on an error to start the inning and Albrecht scooched his feet back on a pitch well inside the batter’s box to find the barrel of the bat. He knocked the pitch through the gap into left field for an RBI double, making the score 4-1 in favor of New Ulm.

New Ulm improves to 22-6-1 on the season with the win and will take on Mankato West today at 1:30 p.m. The No. 3 seed in the tournament, West defeated No. 6 New Prague 14-6 in the first round on Tuesday and beat No. 2 Mankato East 7-3 on Wednesday.

“It’s just one pitch, one out, one inning, one game at a time. That’s our mantra all year,” Anderson said. “What happened before doesn’t matter. All we look at is what we do moving forward.”