“He was on. He had his stuff working tonight,” Belton senior catcher Garrett Vail said.
Everything Beck was, Mesquite Horn’s pitchers were the opposite.
The Tigers waited out 13 walks by Jaguar pitchers as Belton eventually put Horn’s season to rest with an 11-1 run-rule victory Saturday at Tillery Field to sweep a Class 5A bi-district baseball playoff series.
“I felt great today - I was feeling good,” said junior Beck, who struck out a season-high 10 batters, scattered five hits and walked one.
Belton (22-7) will face Dallas White (23-5) at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Corsicana High School in a one-game area-round battle.
The 6-3 Beck hadn’t pitched since April 21, a 16-4 win over Copperas Cove. Coming into Saturday, Beck had struck out 30 batters in 28 innings before he recorded 10 in six innings. Of his 103 pitches, 75 were for strikes.
Normally following junior ace Dillon Newman - who didn’t play Saturday after being ejected for arguing balls and strikes in Thursday’s 9-1 win - in the rotation, Beck delivered a performance reminiscent of the Tigers’ top arm.
“It feels great. It’s the best feeling in the world,” said Beck, who improved his record to 6-1 and lowered his earned-run average to 1.85. “Your heart’s pounding in your chest and you feel like you’re on top of everything.”
Said first-year Tigers coach Eddie Cornblum of Beck: “He was great. He came out and threw strikes. The key today with him was he was throwing his off-speed stuff for strikes. He wasn’t able to do that the last couple games. Today it was awesome.”
Saturday’s game originally was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. but rain pushed the start time to 5. During those off hours, the Belton players watched movies such as “Step Brothers,” “300” and “Major League” either on the bus or at a Hampton Inn.
When game time finally approached, Beck and the Tigers didn’t look sluggish at all.
In the first inning, he hit Ryan Patterson with a pitch, gave up a single to Travis Brewster and walked John Rios to load the bases. He recorded a groundout to second base that allowed the lone run and got a strikeout to end the inning.
He allowed only six baserunners the next five innings, thanks in part to a great defensive play by third baseman John Nieberding in the fourth. Of the 18 total outs, only two were fly balls. Second baseman Brett Hernandez caught one and first baseman Seth Alcozer snared a liner.
“My curveball was working great. My changeup was running pretty good,” Beck said.
The offense scored in five of the six innings despite needing only seven hits while leaving 12 men on base.
Shane Hoelscher lined the first pitch of the game to center field for a double and scored on Kevin Thornton’s single. Nieberding later scored on a wild pitch for a 2-0 lead.
Justin Dechert had a bloop RBI double in the third, Hernandez scored on a sacrifice fly by Nieberding and Hoelscher scored on a double-steal in the fourth for a 5-1 lead.
In the fifth, Belton batted around to score four runs on just one hit.
Hernandez doubled off the wall to score Dechert and eventually came home on a wild pitch. Hoelscher scored when Vail was hit by a pitch, and Tyler Vail scored on an Alcozer RBI walk for a 9-1 lead.
In the sixth, Hoelscher and Marc McKirahan scored the final runs on Nieberding’s bloop single.
No Belton player had more than one hit. Hoelscher scored four times, Hernandez scored twice and Nieberding had three RBI.
“We waited long enough,” Garrett Vail said about arriving in Mesquite at 11 a.m. but not being able to play for six hours. “We were ready to get out and get it done with."
cmeister@temple-telegram.com
