ROCHESTER — Resilient pitching and timely hitting led to the Rochester High School baseball team taking two from the Elma Eagles Friday, cruising 6-1 in the opener before squeaking by 5-4 in the finale.
Ethan Rodriguez tossed a gem in game one, striking out seven over seven innings while only allowing four hits and one run. Colton Weiss followed him up with a solid start in game two, and Kole Smith finished the job despite tense circumstances. The Warriors overcame eight errors in the nightcap to escape victoriously.
“They competed. They got the job done by just simply competing,” Rochester head coach Brad Quarnstrom said of the pitching staff. “We did give them some runs obviously with some defensive miscues, but they certainly competed their tails off.”
After Elma brought two runners aboard and failed to score in the first, the Warriors jumped on Eagles starter Bryston Crawford in the bottom of the first. Kole Smith’s leadoff triple gave way to a Simon Barth RBI double to center, and Rodriguez tacked on another run on an RBI single.
Rodriguez bounced back nicely from two long innings, tossing just eight pitches in the third after 27 in the first two combined. He forced weak contact and threw a lethal combination of fastballs and curveballs.
Barth snagged his second RBI of the day with a sacrifice groundout to score Smith in the third, but the Eagles responded in the fourth as Rodriguez temporarily lost his command. In the fourth, Brayden O’Connor’s two-run single expanded the lead to 5-1, and he found his way home via Ruger Culp’s RBI groundout.
After allowing two singles in the first, Rodriguez didn’t allow another hit until the sixth inning. He pitched out of a jam with two runners in scoring position in the sixth and closed it out with a 1-2-3 inning in the seventh.
“He didn’t have his best stuff today, but it was good enough stuff to definitely keep them off balance and never really pose much of a threat,” Quarnstrom said. “He had a few good curveballs, but he didn’t have great command of it. But just his ability to show it left it planted in their heads, and he throws just hard enough to where if they have any thought of curveball in their mind, that fastball’s by them.”
A 30-minute break in between games seemed to be a backbreaker for both defenses heading into game two. Weiss and Elma starter Brody Palmer were efficient on the mound, but their defenses surrendered free runner after free runner.
Culp’s second sacrifice RBI of the doubleheader got the scoring started in the second inning, and Elma’s first major defensive blunder off of a Barth ground ball scored two more. Similarly to game one, Elma responded to a 3-0 margin with a run in the third inning, but the Warriors got a run back on a Tayden Martin RBI single in the bottom of the third.
Weiss ran into some trouble in the fourth, allowing a leadoff single to reach third on his error and to eventually score on a groundout one at-bat later. Two consecutive errors brought the go-ahead run to the plate, but Weiss struck out the next two batters he faced to prevent any further damage. Barth’s RBI single in the fifth, a rocket to right field, served as an insurance run in a significant moment with the game’s momentum swaying.
“That was huge for a freshman to step up,” Quarnstrom said of Barth.
The Eagles put some more pressure on Weiss in the top of the sixth. With two aboard and the tying run up to bat, Crawford brought the third run home on a single to right to chase Weiss off the mound. Smith replaced him and struck out the next two batters.
Needing two runs to extend an already long day of baseball, Elma forced a couple more errors by Rochester’s defense, including a dropped fly ball by O’Connor in left field that would have ended the game but instead scored a run.
Smith hit his next batter, but, on a 3-2 pitch the next at-bat, he forced a lineout to right to finish the game in tighter fashion than Quarnstrom hoped, especially with the unhealthy amount of errors. He said he was most frustrated by a couple of botched pickoff attempts by his pitchers.
“Some of those are just tough plays, I guess trying to rush it too much in terms of trying to get rid of it before they have it. The pickoff attempts are the frustrating ones because I feel like we work on picks as much or more than anybody,” Quarnstrom said. “But I like our competitiveness right now. We’re in a good spot. Our kids are all competing for one another and playing unselfish team baseball.”
Rochester (8-4, 6-3 EvCo) gets a week off before heading on the road to Olympic on April 25.
