Photo by Jake McNeill/Marshall Independent New Ulm Junior Legion Gold’s Tanner Backer connects on a pitch during a Junior Legion Sub-State G Tournament game at Legion Field in Marshall on Thursday.

By Jake McNeill

jmcneill@marshallindependent.xom

MARSHALL — The top-seeded New Ulm Gold Junior Legion baseball team continued its undefeated run through the Junior Legion Sub-State G Baseball Tournament on Thursday, holding off No. 3 Mankato West for a 4-1 victory to advance to the tournament finals.

New Ulm will take on No. 4 Marshall in the championship round Friday. Coming out of the winner’s bracket, New Ulm needs to win just one game, while Marshall would need to win two in a row. Game 1 is scheduled for noon at Legion Field with Game 2 to be played shortly after if necessary.

Tanner Backer took to the hill for New Ulm, tossing the game’s first inning. He walked the game’s first batter but got out of the jam unscathed by inducing a pop out and second baseman Cohen Domeier showed off the reflexes to grab a line drive and then tagged second before the runner got back for a solo inning-ending double play.

“Tanner’s been a rock for us all year and honestly he didn’t have his best stuff today,” New Ulm manager Mike Anderson said. “But even without his best stuff, his stuff was so good that he kind of grits through it and gets through it. He really put us on his back because we didn’t play particularly well … You know when you watch baseball and you see a team that’s buzzing and a team that’s not? I would not say that we were buzzing today, but we did the job and we finished the game and got the win.”

From there, Backer continued to pitch like an ace on the mound. He went six innings for New Ulm, allowing one runs on six hits. He also struck out seven batters while walking three.

“I was just trying to throw off their timing and mixing in the breaker,” Backer said of his pitch selection on the day. “I just had to bear down and trust my stuff and throw strikes. I wasn’t staying square and I was walking people, but I trusted myself and threw strikes and we got the win.”

New Ulm struck first in the bottom of the first. Walks to Domeier and Elliott Schabert put two runners on with two outs when Parker Neubauer stepped up to the plate. He drilled a hard grounder down the third baseline and it skipped over a Mankato glove into the outfield for an RBI single.

With runners now on the corners, Tanner Backer popped the ball up just over the shortstop to score another runner, making the score 2-0.

In the second inning, New Ulm doubled its lead with another series of hits. Mankato retired the inning’s first batter, but back-to-back singles by Dirk Haynes and Zach Hubbard and a Domeier walk loaded the bases. Kyle Albrecht then broke the tension with a two-run single to center field, making the score 4-0, before a strikeout and a fly out halted the rally.

“If I’m honest, they [Mankato] kind of gave us some runs,” Anderson said. “They kicked the ball around in those two innings, but we took really good at-bats. We didn’t swing at bad pitches in those two innings and generally this team has been really good at not swinging through bad pitches.”

Anderson said that his team’s quality at-bat percentage was well over 50% on the season but added that Mankato’s pitcher did a good job of keeping New Ulm off balance with his unorthodox arm slot and his ability to keep the ball low.

New Ulm put two runners on in the bottom of the fifth when Schabert and Neubauer reached on a single and an error respectively. After a strikeout and a double steal put them on second and third with no outs, Ryan Rathmann drilled a single up the middle. Yet, the line drive went right to a Mankato West glove and the throw to third beat the runner back there for the inning-ending double-play.

West got on the board in the top of the fourth. Ben O’Neil hit a leadoff single and got over to second base on a ground out. After O’Neil stole third to get in position, Michael Fischer sent him home with an RBI single, cutting the deficit to 4-1.

Domeier earned the save after retiring each of the three batters he faced in the seventh inning.

After the win over Mankato, New Ulm needs to keep its momentum rolling against a hot Marshall team. While Marshall Black dropped its tournament opener to Hutchinson, it has since claimed a 10-0 win over Tri-City United, an 8-2 revenge win over Hutchinson and a pair of wins over Mankato East and West. Marshall looked particularly strong against second-seeded West, which it beat 15-4 in five innings to advance to the championship.

Marshall won its regular-season meeting against New Ulm by a final score of 10-3.

“We have our No. 2 [pitcher] ready to go and our No. 4 and 5 are ready to go, so we’ve been pretty fortunate to get some pretty good pitching performances this weekend,” Anderson said. “Coming into this season, one question was what our pitching depth was and, to be honest, as the season’s progressed there have been quite a few kids that have blossomed and really turned themselves from throwers into pitchers.”