Baseball: Yorkville falls to Ottawa

Updated: May 26, 2012 5:13PM

Winning a championship-level baseball game usually takes this formula: pitch well, make plays on defense and get good hits.

Ottawa (25-11) got all three of those elements to work in its favor in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Yorkville at the Yorkville Class 3A Regional. The Pirates win a regional for the first time since 1999 and move on to Wednesday’s LaSalle-Peru Sectional.

Ottawa right-hander Jonah Morris outpitched counterpart Derek Piszczek, but both threw outstanding ballgames. Working primarily on the outer half of the plate, the junior allowed an unearned run in the sixth inning on a Tanner Cook sacrifice fly, but scattered four hits and struck out 10.

“I was feeling great in the bullpen and the coach said I had to just fire them in there the whole time,” Morris said. “I just did that and it worked.”

Piszczek scattered seven hits in his complete-game effort, but the Pirates got to him for two runs in the third on RBIs from Michael Hermosillo and Kyle Walbaum.

Both of those runs came after Yorkville (24-12-1) turned a double play to put two outs on the board. The Pirates took advantage of an error and used good situational hitting to keep the inning alive.

“We did everything our team has to do to win,” Ottawa coach Don Heaberlin said. “I watched these kids come up through little league and pony league, and it couldn’t be earned by a better bunch of guys.”

Yorkville had some chances, especially after it loaded the bases in the third, but came away empty while also having three runners thrown out on the bases.

“We made a couple of mistakes on the basepaths and at the end couldn’t make a play when we needed to,” Yorkville coach Scott Luken said. “It could have been anyone’s game at the end and unfortunately they got it.”

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