Lakers look for continued state success in second round
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JORDAN -- A young Atwater Chuckers team and a veteran Lakers team from Hanska will battle this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at the Mini Met in Jordan to keep their amateur baseball season alive in the second round of the Minnesota Class C Amateur Baseball Tournament.
Hanska manger Chris Koob said that his team will be facing a tough pitcher in left-hander Josh Kingery on Sunday.
"He has been one of the best pitchers in the state in the last five years," Koob said. "They will go with him and he is also one of the best hitters in the state and they have some young players around him."
While the Chuckers downed Nimrod 10-0 in seven innings last Saturday in their first-round matchup, Koob said that Atwater is primarily a pitching-defense team.
"They resemble New Ulm [Brewers] when they had their top arms pitching," he said.
The Lakers are also coming off a good offensive performance in their first-round game of state with a 13-3 rout of Waterville in eight innings.
"We are playing really well -- we had a good region tournament -- and our situation with hitting has been a lot better," Koob said. "We had some big moments in the Waterville game. The game was actually closer than the score, but we got big hits when we needed them, and we are playing our best baseball at the right time."
Koob said that last year's state tournament experience really helped in their game with Waterville.
"We felt like a veteran team and played like a veteran team," Koob said.
While the Lakers are a veteran team, Atwater is probably the youngest team in the state tournament with an average age of 19 years old. The Chuckers also earned their first state tournament win in team history last weekend.
"We have played really good baseball the last month," Dave Kingery, manager of Atwater said as they come into their meeting with Hanska at 18-8. "We struggled at the beginning of the year -- we were missing some college players and we had some injuries and we had to sign some high school players to get us through a few games. But overall [Saturday] was our first state amateur tournament win, so this is already close to the best year we have ever had."
On the mound, the Chuckers are led by Josh Kingery -- who the Lakers will face Sunday. Josh Kingery has thrown 100 innings on the season and has a 10-2 record with a minuscule ERA of 0.42. He has 123 strikeouts and only 12 walks allowed and a batting average against him of .148.
Dave Kingery and Jack Peterson are the other two key Atwater pitchers who have combined to throw 78 innings.
Josh Kingery also leads the Chuckers with a .363 batting average from the No. 3 spot in the lineup. Leadoff hitter Dave Kingery is at .340, with Carson McCain at .345 average.
"The last month or so when we have played our best baseball, we are definitely a station-to-station team," Dave Kingery said. "We have guys in the lineup who can provide the power but right now we are definitely a station-to-station team. And our strength is our pitching and defense.
"We do not tend to score a ton of runs -- our 10-0 win Saturday was an oddity for this year -- and our team pitching is now at 1.74. If we can score a couple of runs, I am confident with the pitching that we have."
Dave Kingery said that his young team goes into games with the attitude that no matter who you are playing or what the situation is, you have to play the game you know how to play.
"Josh will start on Sunday," Dave Kingery said. "He has had some arm troubles the last few years, so his velocity is not quite where it used to be. He is touching back into the upper 80s. It is really good for our team because he sets the tone on the mound, and when we have him on the mound, our team plays more confident."
Dave Kingery said that Hanska is a team that can hit and the Lakers also have good pitchers.
"Our key is going to be can we scrap a few runs across and then rely on our pitching and defense," he said. "It is going to be a different atmosphere -- I hope our young guys can take a breath because we are very young.
"Veteran leadership on an amateur team is very big, so it is going to be a big test for us. We cannot let who we are playing affect how we play."
Koob said he will send veteran left-hander Aaron Portner to the mound against the Chuckers Sunday.
Portner allowed eight hits and two walks for three runs while striking out seven in eight innings this past Saturday in the win over Waterville, but all eight hits he allowed came in the first two innings of the game. Chris Knowles hit his 12th homer of the season also for the Lakers in Saturday's win.