The Macomb High baseball team picked up a pair of home victories last week against non-conference foes to improve to 4-1 on the season.
One day after handing Limestone its first loss of the season by a 12-2 score in five innings, the Bombers played host to Rushville-Industry and downed the Rockets 11-1 in another five inning affair Friday afternoon at Phil Bradley Field MHS sophomore starter Jake Ogle shut down RIHS in order to start the game and the Bombers capitalized in their half of the inning against RIHS starter Keaton DeMoss.
DeMoss hit Issac Leinbach with a pitch to lead off before retiring Nick Elbe on an infield groundout.
Emmett Beck then followed with an RBI single to put MHS up 1-0. Beck would steal second, but DeMoss struck out Kaden Knupp for the second out.
Beck took third on a throwing error by RIHS catcher Bradley Hollingsworth and eventually scored on an RBI single by Ogle to make it 2-0.
DeMoss issued consecutive walks to Jaxon Barclay and Blaine Eddington to load the bases before Ogle came in to score on another error by Hollingsworth to make it 3-0.
Leighton Lambert drew a walk to load the bases again and Hayden Katz followed with an infield single to drive in Barclay to make it a 4-0 score.
DeMoss issued his fourth walk of the inning to Leinbach that forced in Eddington to put MHS up 5-0. A wild pitch allowed Lambert to come in for a 6-0 lead before DeMoss retired Beck on a fly ball to right to get out of further damage.
RIHS mounted a threat in the top of the second when Ogle walked Trevor Perry to lead off the inning. A single and another walk would load the bases for the Rockets, but Ogle struck out Brady McGinnis and retired Jackson Spencer on a ground ball to the mound to escape out of the jam.
The score remained 6-0 until the fourth when RIHS got on the scoreboard with a two-out rally against MHS sophomore reliever Tyler Schulz.
Hollingsworth reached on an infield error and DeMoss followed with a single. DeMoss would then steal second to put runners on second and third.
McGinnis lined a single to center to drive in Hollingsworth, but DeMoss was thrown out at home by Leinbach to end the inning with the score 6-1.
MHS came back with two runs in the fourth on an RBI single from Knupp and Ogle drove in another run on a groundout to give the Bombers an 8-1 advantage.
Schulz retired RIHS in order in the top of the fifth and MHS would push across three runs in the bottom of the fifth to end the game at 11-1.
Leinbach and Elbe provided the RBI singles to give the Bombers the victory.
First year MHS head coach John Ogle was pleased with the start his squad got off to against RIHS.
“Got the momentum going early and got off to a good start,” said Ogle. “Obviously that six spot in the first inning was awesome to get things going. I wish we could have put a few more on in the next couple of innings, but we’ll take what we can get.”
Jake Ogle went three innings to earn the victory after allowing no runs on just one hit and striking out five.
Schulz pitched two innings in relief and gave one run on three hits while striking out two.
DeMoss took the loss for RIHS (0-4) after allowing six runs on three hits.
McGinnis went 3.1 innings of relief for the Rockets and gave up five runs on five hits while striking out four.
Afterwards, Coach Ogle noted that he was happy with the performance he got from his two sophomore hurlers.
“Jake did a really nice job to start the game on the mound and we made some plays behind him,” said Ogle. “And Tyler looked really good and did a really nice job on the mound, too.”
In the MHS victory over Limestone Thursday, the Bombers got strong pitching from Elbe and Barclay to subdue the visiting Rockets.
With the scored tied at 2-2 in the bottom of the third, the Bombers scored four runs off of Limestone starter Ben Suppert to take a 6-2 lead.
Barclay would come on in the fifth for MHS and shutout the Rockets while striking out two and the Bombers would erupt for six runs against two Limestone relievers in the bottom of the fifth to walk off with a 12-2 victory.
Barclay led a 14-hit attack for the MHS offense by going 3-for-4 with a run scored while Elbe went 2-for-3 with four RBIs and two runs scored.
On the mound, Elbe earned the win after giving up two runs on four hits in four innings of work. Limestone also committed seven errors in the game as the Rockets fell to 5-1 for the season.
Macomb High was scheduled to travel to Kewanee on Monday before playing at Quincy High Tuesday in a pair of non-conference contests.
