We are part of The Trust Project.
ADRIAN -- Offense was plentiful as the Worthington Junior and Senior Legion baseball teams performed in Adrian on Thursday night. The juniors defeated Adrian 20-4 in three innings and the seniors followed with a 14-6 win.
Runs came in bunches. The junior team scored 12 runs in the top of the third inning and had 13 hits in all. The senior team broke the game open early, scoring seven runs in the second and four more in the third.
Junior Legion
Worthington 20, Adrian 4
Despite the one-sided win, Worthington Junior Legion head coach TD Hostikka said his team’s performance was spotty. Some lack of focus might be expected in a game that gets out of hand, but obviously a lot of things went the visiting team’s way.
ADVERTISEMENT
Ryan Lais went 4-for-4 in the game with four singles, and he scored four runs. Chase Byrne went 2-for-4 with a double and three RBIs. And Ben Mahlberg was 2-for-2 with two runs and two RBIs.
But the Worthington squad committed three errors. That wasn’t as many as Adrian committed, but they were costly.
“All four of their runs were unearned,” said Hostikka, turning his attention to the difficulty teams face when in the middle of a blowout. “It’s hard to play your game. It’s hard to play aggressively. But they’re young. Adrian is a young team. They’re going to get better.”
Tucker Brandner pitched two innings for Worthington and Anthony Quintanilla finished up. Adrian used five pitchers in the shortened contest.
Worthington is 7-2 in conference play and has another game at Minneota on Thursday. Then it’s on to a tournament in Alexandria Friday through Sunday.
Worthington 26(12) -- 20-15-3
Adrian 040 -- 4-3-8
Senior Legion
ADVERTISEMENT
Worthington 14, Adrian 6
Adrian starting pitcher Evan Lenz moved through the Worthington lineup like a knife through butter in the first inning, but in the second Post 5 caught up to his fastball, chasing him from the mound.
Hits by Triston Sauerbrei, Tommy Lais, another by Sauerbrei -- plus a few walks and errors -- led to seven Worthington runs. Four more scored in the second after singles by Cooper McCoy and Blake Ahrenstorff, followed by a two-run single by Tate Gaul and a two-run double by Coy Turner.
A three-run fifth helped Adrian pull to within 11-5, but the visitors remained firmly in front.
Jake Brandner started on the mound for Worthington, but though his pitches were hard to hit he walked five and hit two batters. McCoy hurled for two innings and Kent Lais finished.
After Lenz was replaced with two out in the second inning, Dawson Krahling pitched the rest of the way for Adrian.
The Worthington squad gets a well-earned break in the schedule before heading to Sleepy Eye on Tuesday and competing in a Crookston tournament beginning on July 8. Head coach Tim Gaul said his club lost its focus somewhat on Thursday after getting their 11-1 lead.
“We move to 13-3 and it’s time for a little break from baseball,” said the coach. “We’ve got five days off. We’re going to heal up, we’re going to get our minds right to get focused to play better baseball moving forward.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Worthington 074 001 2 -- 14-13-2
Adrian 010 131 0 -- 6-6-4
