Photo by Brady Dennis New Ulm’s Cohen Domeier watches a hit during a Big South Conference baseball game against St. Peter on Friday at Johnson Park.

NEW ULM — They say that baseball is a game of inches.

That was never more evident in the St. Peter-New Ulm Big South Conference baseball game at Johnson Park on Friday.

The Eagles trailed St. Peter 2-0 going into the bottom of the seventh when New Ulm’s Candon Briggs drew a leadoff walk off of Alex Korir. Hunter Larson followed with a base hit to right field to put runners on first and second and no outs.

“We were debating bunting,” New Ulm head coach Mike Anderson said. “Baseball 101 tells you first and second and no outs and we have our top of the order up — baseball tells you we should have bunted, but we felt Zach [Hubbard] was going to run into a barrel.”

Hubbard did but unfortunately his line drive headed for center field was caught by Saints shortstop Levi Wachal, who threw to second for a double play. One pitch later Korir got the last out of the game for a 2-0 Saints win.

Korir got the win for St. Peter, allowing seven hits and fanning three.

Dirk Haynes took the loss for the Eagles, going 4 1/3 innings. He allowed three hits and struck out five. Haynes walked five and hit a batter. Unfortunately two of those walks and the hit batter came in the fifth inning when the Saints scored both of their runs.

“Their pitcher kept us off-balance for the first half of the game especially,” Anderson said. “And as the game progressed we switched approaches — we told everyone not to swing at if you see a strike — because we wanted to create some base runners. We had opportunities, but we just could not capitalize.”

St. Peter scored their two runs in the fifth when Korir singled with one out and Wachal drew the first of two walks in the inning off of Haynes.

After a pop out for the second out, Haynes hit Ethan Potts to load the bases. A walk to Noah Frey forced in the first run before a passed ball made it 2-0.

“We had some things go wrong in the same inning thats a couple of runs,” Anderson said.

And the Eagles had their chances in the game, especially late as they stranded two runners in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings and failed to get that key hit.

“We had our chances — we had a couple of base running mistakes,” Anderson said. “And there have been a lot of moments where we are one hit away of really breaking open offensively.

“Our offensive statistics are really good, but in a way they are deceiving, too. We are hitting close to .300 as a team, but there have been so many opportunities where we have been bitten by hard-hit balls where people get doubled off — just like Zach’s line drive.”

New Ulm hosts Marshall on Monday at Mueller Park.