East Prairie baseball outlasts Saxony Lutheran in pitchers’ duel

A four-run spell between two half-innings saw East Prairie and Saxony Lutheran exchange two runs each.

An early marker from the visiting Eagles proved enough to hand Saxony Lutheran its first loss of the season, however, with the Crusaders falling 3-2 at home.

“It's a solid win for us,” East Prairie coach Gary Scott said. “You know, we haven't beaten Saxony in quite a while. Anytime we can beat them, it's a good win for us. We just need to play more and get going. Hopefully, this right here will get us jump-started and we can keep going.”

A slow offensive day doomed the Crusaders. Two runs in the bottom of the third gave Saxony Lutheran its only offense of the day, and three runs combined between the second and fourth innings proved all that East Prairie needed to down the Crusaders.

“As far as offense is concerned, we had opportunities there in the middle part of the game, two or three innings in a row where we had guys, two or three guys on the bases with less than two outs,” Crusaders coach Paul Sander said. “That’s where we struck out. We struck out too much today.

“We had too many strikeouts, but we had quite a bit of traffic in the middle part of the game and just couldn't come through.”

The Eagles and Crusaders went back and forth for the full seven innings, putting up 11 scoreless half-innings with East Prairie’s Noah Johnson earning the win without earning a run while Saxony Lutheran’s Lucas Koenig pitched 6.2 innings, earning three runs in his first game at the varsity level.

“We were real happy with the way Lucas Koenig’s first varsity start went,” Sander said. “We're trying to get our pitching lined out. We only returned one pitcher that has any varsity experience, and so the last two days we've had pretty good performances.”

Sander called back to the performance of Owen Tarry on the mound on Monday, who pitched 5.1 innings while earning the win against St. Pius X.

Getting experience for the young arms proves to be a big focus early in the season for the Saxony Lutheran club, with an array of players scheduled to throw for the Crusaders with open spots in the lineup available.

“We want to look at all the pitchers we have,” Sander said. “We're gonna start somebody tomorrow that's never started a varsity game before. Those guys will identify themselves as the year goes on as who we can count on and who we want to throw in those games.

“A lot of times, it doesn't happen for the coach to do that – they do it for themselves. You know, they'll have to perform. I tell them, hitters play. The hitters will play and the pitchers that do well will pitch and once we get that identified, that's what we'll do.”