Kamiak pitcher outlasts Meadowdale Mavericks

Published 10:47 pm Thursday, April 8, 2010

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Instead of turning to jelly after an arduous five innings on the pitching mound, Kamiak starter Jake Bennett’s left arm strengthened as the 6-foot senior recorded four strikeouts in the final two frames to help lead the Knights to a 6-1 Western Conference South Division win over Meadowdale Thursday at Mountlake Terrace High School.

Bennett struggled to find the strike zone early — walking five, hitting one batter and surrendering a first-inning, lead-off home run to Taylor Brennan — but settled down after a lengthy five innings of work.

“It was a long game,” Bennett, who has won his last two starts for Kamiak, said with a laugh. “I thought I was hitting my spots, but I wasn’t getting the calls. That’s baseball though.”

The rocky start may have worked in the hurler’s favor — Bennett admittedly takes a long time to get warmed up.

“The longer I go, it seems to be, the harder I start to throw, the better off I am,” Bennett said. “Sometimes I find myself throwing 50 pitches just to warm up because it seems like the further on I go, the stronger I get.”

Kamiak head coach Steve Merkley added: “He (Bennett) threw his hardest in the last two innings. He had a good game. He’s had two (strong outings) in a row now and he’s doing well for us.”

Meadowdale (5-2 league, 5-4 overall) couldn’t find the offense to crawl out of a five-run deficit created by numerous throwing errors.

A dropped third strike in the second inning culminated in a ball airmailed over first baseman Kevin Sand’s head which allowed a run to score. After second baseman Andrew Groves was pegged by a Tyler McCabe pitch, Kamiak (5-2, 7-2) junior shortstop Seth Heck laced a two-run double to left-center field for a 3-1 lead.

“We just made more mistakes than they did,” Meadowdale head coach Bill Hummel said.

Meadowdale’s four errors, combined with an inefficient start from McCabe turned into a tough loss to swallow for the Mavericks, especially after outhitting Kamiak 5-2.

“Not a very efficient start from him (McCabe),” Hummel said. “He’s had better starts than that and he will have better starts than that. His pitch count got high and against a good 4A school it’s going to be hard work.”

McCabe tossed four innings, walked five and hit three batters. Reliever Sam Herzer finished the game with two scoreless innings of work — setting down five batters in a row at one point for the Mavericks.

Kamiak plated two more runners in the sixth when Meadowdale’s second baseman had to range to his right and make a sliding stop on Groves’ sharply hit ground ball. The throw skipped on the turf and past first base.

While it wasn’t his most aesthetically pleasing outing, Kamiak’s Bennett was able to shake off a lead-off home run to Meadowdale’s shortstop Taylor Brennan.

Brennan, who finished 2-for-4 with an RBI, hit the ball hard all day, but twice lined out to Kamiak center fielder Chris Guinn, who added an RBI on a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning for the Knights.

“That’s the third game in a row I’ve given up a home run in the first inning,” Bennett said. “I was like ‘just get it out of the way,’ at least it’s over with so from there on out I had nothing to worry about. It could only go up from there.”

Brennan added a single in the seventh for Meadowdale.

“I tip my hat to him, he had a good day at the plate,” Bennett said of Brennan. “He’s a good ballplayer.”

“You love the way he’s swinging the bat,” Hummel said of his hard-hitting shortstop, adding that he’d like to see more players step up. “He’s just hitting everything hard, but we need a little more. Offensively, we were poor today. The way we have to win games is we have to pressure them (opposing teams). And the thing that we talked about here was we had 14 of our 21 outs were strikeouts or balls up in the air. We’re playing on turf and we need to put the ball on the ground.”

Meadowdale hitters flied out eight times and Bennett struck out six batters.

At Mountlake Terrace H.S.

Meadowdale1000000—154

Kamiak030300x—622

McCabe, Herzer (5) and Ackerman, Moore (5). Bennett and Houghtaling. WP—Bennett. LP—McCabe. 2B—Suh (M), Heck (K). HR—Brennan. Records—Meadowdale 5-2 league, 5-4 overall. Kamiak 5-2, 7-2.