An old baseball adage dictates that good pitching will beat good hitting, so when two evenly matched teams each send a number-one hurler to the mound, the game is usually a close one.
That’s exactly how it was in Saturday’s first round game of the AA American Legion District baseball tournament at Volunteer Field in Anacortes when the combined Oak Harbor/Coupeville team squared off against Lake Stevens.
Wildcats hurler Danny Lura and the Vikings’ Byran Johnson made the game a pitchers’ duel right from the first inning, and it took a sixth-inning squeeze bunt to give Oak Harbor/Coupeville a 2-1 victory.
Lura gave up just three hits and struck out four, and allowed just one Lake Stevens runner to reach base in the final four innings of the game.
“It was a good day for me,” he said. “I started off rough, but came back and found my zone.”
Oak Harbor/Coupeville scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the second when Marcus Naymik drew a walk and Ben Wolfe singled with one out to put runners of first and second.
Zach Hauser then grounded to shortstop forcing Wolfe at second and sending Naymik to third.
Hauser then broke for second base and got into a rundown that allowed Naymik to cross the plate with the first run of the game.
Lake Stevens tied the score with a run in the top of the third inning on a single, a botched pickoff attempt, an infield out and a wild pitch.
“Danny had some trouble early in the game and I told him he needed to make some adjustments and not try to be so fine,” coach Jim Waller said. “Once he did that, he was all right.”
Oak Harbor/Coupeville pushed across the winning run in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Wolfe led off with a walk and Hauser moved him up to second base on a sacrifice bunt.
Wolfe reached third on a wild pitch but injured his leg and Jared Murdy was inserted as a pinch runner.
Kyle Wilcox then laid down a perfect squeeze bunt to score Murdy with what proved to be the game-winning run.
“I would have liked to have seen us hit a little better,” Waller said. “We’ve been hitting the ball pretty well and I guess we hit the ball well enough to win today. We executed our small ball game and got the bunts down.”
Mount Vernon 8, Oak Harbor/Coupeville 5
Sunday’s game against Mount Vernon was rained out and rescheduled for Monday, and a combination of unfortunate circumstances led to an 8-5 defeat.
Down to just nine players due to football camps, the Wildcats had their backs to the wall.
However, Oak Harbor/Coupeville didn’t go down without a fight.
Reilly hit the first pitch of the game out of the park and the team added single runs in the second and third innings to build a 3-1 lead.
In the bottom of the third, Mount Vernon bunched together three hits good for three runs and added four more in the bottom of the fourth for an 8-3 lead.
Oak Harbor/Coupeville scored twice the top of the fifth, but a triple play brought an end to the rally.
