Saturday’s game brought an earlier first pitch for Community R-6 but a longer day.
From the beginning of the 10 a.m. game, the Trojans committed errors to put them behind Marceline 2-1 at home after the first inning until they eventually allowed 15 unearned runs to lose 18-2. It is Community’s largest margin of defeat this season and largest in the program since a 22-2 defeat to North Shelby to begin May last season.
Head coach Joel Krato said the Marceline game is an outlier like that North Shelby game since last year’s Trojans went on to advance to the state Final Four. It remains to be seen what this year’s Trojans (7-4) will do with much baseball left, but Krato does know they were ready to play Thursday in their 8-0 victory at Central Activities Conference foe Sturgeon (6-5, 1-3 CAC) — who has played to close 7-3 and 4-0 losses to Pilot Grove and Class 1 No. 6 Cairo, respectively.
“That’s the difference when you’re ready to go and when you’re not ready to go,” Krato said. “Thursday, we were ready to go, we were firing on all cylinders, we were excited for the game and we wanted to be there. Today we didn’t. It’s all about attitude, it’s all about mindset, it's all about wanting to be there and wanting to compete.”
Krato said he did have a scouting report for Marceline (3-5) as he stayed up until about 10:30 p.m. the previous night watching all of the Tigers’ games. He said the defensive shifts the Trojans employed did work as the ball was hit exactly where he thought it would go, but the defense didn’t make the plays.
“The defense is an analogy for how we came ready to play,” Krato said. “We didn’t show up, we didn’t swing it well, we didn’t run the bases well, we didn’t defend well and we didn’t do anything well. Unfortunately, when you’re teenage boys, sometimes you’re not ready to go at 10 a.m. on a Saturday.”
Mason Rohan did a good job of throwing strikes, Krato said, despite the many defensive miscues. Rohan allowed three runs on six hits and zero walks in 5⅔ innings while striking out nine.
“Going into the bottom of the sixth inning, he had thrown 70 strikes out of 94 pitches, which is great,” Krato said. “They had a few hits here and there and he hit two, but he filled up the zone.”
Community (2-0 CAC) plays at conference foe Class 1 No. 5 New Franklin (7-6, 1-1 CAC) at 5 p.m. Monday.
