Just one out away from defeating gritty Tyler Lee and forcing a winner-take-all Game 3, Belton starting pitcher Newman beaned Justin Eikner and two pitches later Colin Moore stunned the Tigers with a two-run homer to give the Red Raiders a 5-4 lead. Tyler Lee would tack on another run for a 6-4 victory Saturday afternoon to complete the sweep in a Class 5A Region II quarterfinal playoff series at Panther Field.
Only minutes after Moore’s shot that barely cleared the left-field wall capped the Red Raiders’ comeback from a 4-0 deficit, Belton, which expected to be playing baseball in June, was ousted from the playoffs.
“I’m lost for words,” said first-year Tigers coach Eddie Cornblum, whose team finished the season 23-9. “This is a good group, this is a good team. And to go and lose a game like that . . . that’s tough. These guys deserve better than that.”
In a season filled with lofty expectations of reaching the state tournament, District 12-5A co-champion Belton will settle for its deepest postseason run since 2005.
“We’re 23-9 and had a chance to keep playing,” Cornblum said. “Our guys worked so hard to get past this. They were really looking forward to going to the fourth round.”
The Tigers just couldn’t overtake gutty Tyler Lee (25-2-2), which showed tremendous character on Saturday by scoring all six of its runs with two outs. During Thursday’s 2-1 victory, the Red Raiders got a two-out, two-run double from Eric Johnson, and pitcher Jacob Yanker kept Belton in check.
“We just hung in there long enough and got a few timely hits,” said Tyler Lee coach Mike Pirtle, whose team will face Lufkin in a 5A Region II semifinal next week. “(It was) two evenly matched teams. We just happened to come out on top. The home run was a gamebreaker.”
With Belton ahead 4-3 in the top of the seventh, Newman got leadoff batter Brett Pirtle to ground out to second and Derek Miller to ground out to third. His 0-1 pitch hit Eikner before Moore blasted Newman’s 0-1 changeup just out of the reach of leftfielder Justin Dechert.
“They’ve been throwing me off-speed the whole series,” said Moore, who went 2-for-2 and was hit by pitch twice. “They threw me a curve ball the pitch before that. I kinda figured the changeup was coming. I was sitting on it and had a good swing on it.”
Said Cornblum, whose team couldn’t overcome the home run and had three harmless fly outs in the bottom of the seventh: “It wasn’t a mistake. It was a good pitch. That’s a changeup away and a guy reached out and pulled it.”
Belton jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning behind Shane Hoelscher, who finished the season with 22 hits in his last 37 at-bats. Hoelscher singled, advanced to third on starter Miller’s errant pickoff attempt to first and scored on John Nieberding’s sacrifice fly.
In the third, Belton made it 4-0 and was on the brink of turning the game into a blowout. Hoelscher walked and went to third when Nieberding executed a hit-and-run to perfection by singling to right. Garrett Vail delivered a two-run double and Dechert singled up the middle to score courtesy runner Tyler Vail.
Resilient Tyler Lee answered in the top of the fourth. Eikner and Moore started the inning with consecutive singles before Newman (111 pitches, nine strikeouts, four earned runs) nearly got out of the jam unscathed. With two outs, he gave up a two-run double to Johnson and pinch hitter Tyler Lange singled him home to trim the lead to 4-3.
Newman (8-5) escaped a two-on, two-out situation in the fifth and struck out the side in the sixth. Belton nearly added a run in the sixth but Kevin Thornton was stranded at third.
Newman went 2-for-3, Dechert went 2-for-3 and stole two bases and Hoelscher scored twice.
“I thought our guys did a better job of adjusting today,” said Cornblum, whose team had five hits in Thursday’s loss. “They came up and had a good workout yesterday and focused on taking the ball the other way. We had a lot more hits. We had better at-bats today. We just didn’t get it done."
cmeister@temple-telegram.com
