Zach Mitchell
HAUSER versus LUTHERAN
5-20-2019
Senior Night is always a time I looked forward to sharing with players, families and fans. To play a game and then recognize Senior players for their efforts, contributions and accomplishments for Lutheran Baseball in their careers was an evening I valued.
On May 20, 2019 we were playing Hauser. At the time Hauser was ranked #1 in 1A. Surprising to me that they were #1 over University, but they were. Going into the game, our record was 10 and 12. We had played a very challenging season with losses to North Central, South Putnam, Speedway, Scecina,
Triton Central (2), Waldron (a story of its own!), Southport, University (2) and Lafayette Jeff. We also had some good wins. We beat Lawrence Central, Ritter, Greenwood Christian, Beech Grove, Indiana Deaf, Morristown, Southwestern, Triton Central and Monrovia.
Going into the game against Hauser, we did not have Matthew Alter available to start pitching. He had pitched against Lafayette Jeff four days earlier and his arm needed rest as we were starting the Sectional on May 23. I guess we were the underdogs going into the game.
One of our seniors was Zach Mitchell. Zach had been the second baseman as a junior and senior. He was an impressive 5'10" and 150 pounds! Zach represented what I enjoyed very much at Lutheran, the players who stuck with the program, improved their skills, and then when they got an opportunity to play, they took advantage of the situation.
Zach had good stats and filled his role very well. He was a very good teammate. Zach was also pretty quiet and just did his job. Very dependable and solid.
Here are stats Zach had as a player:
YEAR AVG. HITS AB 2B 3B HR RUNS RBI SAC BB HBP K CHANCES F. AVG.
2018 .275 19 69 1 - - 8 8 - 13 4 24 73 .877
2019 .246 17 69 1 - 1 17 8 6 9 5 17 62 .887
It is easy to see how Zach improved from his Junior to Senior season. This story is definitely related to these stat lines!
We started the game with Noah Wood pitching. Noah had been the starting catcher for 4 years but had also pitched in his career. He got through the first two innings without giving up a run. Zach led off the bottom of the second inning second inning with a double. His only double of the season. Senior Night!
Freshman Sean Moore then walked. Jonas Akers, junior first baseman, then singled and drove in Zach to give us a 1-0 lead after two innings.
In the top of the third Hauser put together some hits and scored three runs. In our half of the third we did not score. In the fourth, Hauser had another big inning by scoring another three runs to lead 6-1 after 3 and a half innings.
We needed to find a way to get back in the game. As fate would have it, Zach Mitchell would lead off in the bottom of the fourth. Earlier in the game Zach had his first extra base hit of the season. He saved the best for this moment by leading off our half of the inning with a HOME RUN! Senior Night! A great example of senior leadership. It was also Zach's first career home run and his only one. We really needed it and we ended up scoring two more runs to make the score Hauser 6 and LHS 4 after 4 innings.
Zach's home run lit a fire for our team. We were back in the game. Matthew said he was ready to go and try to win the game. So we went to the 5th inning with our best line up: Matthew pitching and Noah catching and everybody else ready to do their jobs.
In the top of the fifth, Hauser went down 1-2-3 with two strikeouts. Matthew was ready.
In our half, senior Matt Holm led off with a walk. Senior Brett Reid then singled. Sean Moore walked and then Jonas Akers singled. To keep things going, Zach then had his third base hit of the game. Ultimately, we batted around and scored 6 runs to take a 10-6 lead. All of this started with Zach's home run. We have all seen how when a player does something positive, other players then also raise their games to accomplish good things. It was contagious!
So from down 6-4, we were leading 10-6 over the #1 ranked team on Senior Night going into the top of the sixth inning. Hauser's best player, catcher Sean Miller, hit a home run to make the score 10-7 with one out. Miller was ultimately voted as the IHSBCA 1A All-State Catcher. (Certainly he was a very good player. For my money, our catcher Noah Wood was my choice!). Their next hitter, Trey Johnson, hit a double off the leftfield fence. That was interesting as he was a lefthanded batter and was behind on a fastball and took advantage of our short dimension down the leftfield line. The third hitter walked so we did have some concern as Matthew was not supposed to pitch in the first place. Now with the score 10-7, runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, we checked on Matthew and he said he was good. He proved to be prophetic as he struckout the clean up hitter and got the next batter on a fly out
In our half of the sixth, our confidence continued and we scored two more runs. Not that we were hitting well. We used a Hit by Pitch, 3 walks and one base hit to score the runs. It seemed that Hauser had seen the writing on the wall and understood that they were not going to win this game.
In the top of the 7th, Matthew retired their batters in order to close out the Senior Night victory!
While it definitely was a team win, a special nod has to go to Zach Mitchell for the win. Zach had his best game as a Saint! He hit a home run, a double and then a single to lead our team to the victory. To have this level of performance on Senior Night was definitely special. Thanks Zach
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