Meadow Heights falls to Puxico in Chaffee baseball tournament

CHAFFEE, Mo. -- Meadow Heights coach Nick Herman had every right to worry Friday when his starting pitcher, junior Nick Mayfield, grounded to third base and collided with sturdy Puxico first baseman Seth Luttrell, who stretched high for the throw and then remained on the bag to insure the out was recorded.

Mayfield was retired on the play, then had to pull himself off the ground after the fourth-inning spill. There was no physical harm to the pitcher who was throwing a shutout at the time.

The damage would come when Mayfield returned to the mound in the top of the fifth and he walked the leadoff man in what would become a four-run inning for Puxico, which went on to an 8-3 victory on the first day of the Chaffee Round Robin Tournament.

Due to an unwise throwing decision that resulted in an error, three of the four runs in the inning were unearned off Mayfield, who would exit in the sixth inning after giving up three singles without retiring a batter.

"He pitched four solid innings for us and probably lost gas," Herman said. "He hasn't gone that long or that far in a game all year. He kind of got gassed. We tried to stretch him out because we're short on pitching."

To Herman, the collision was a nonfactor in Mayfield's plight on the mound.

"That's probably the second or third time he's run into somebody over there," Herman said. "He's used to it. He's a big boy, he can take care of himself. If we had football, he'd be a good football player probably because he's hard-nosed and gets after it."

Mayfield is the type of player that Herman covets in his first year as coach. He's got nine similar players to Mayfield, but that's it. Herman, who has plenty of room to move about in the dugout when his team takes the field, has just 10 players on the roster.

The numbers break down to one senior, four juniors, a sophomore and four freshmen.

He can ill-afford an injury to Mayfield -- or anyone else -- but he's at peace with what would be an undesirable situation for many.

"Last year we started out with 17 or 18 but finished with about 12," Herman said about a one-win season. "Some of the kids kind of gave up and quit.

"I've got 10 solid kids [this year] that won't give up. I'd rather have that than a bunch of kids that end up quitting. So I've got a good solid bunch of kids, and I'm proud to be their coach."

Despite the roster being composed of 40 percent freshmen, the Panthers doubled last year's win total earlier in the week when they defeated Leopold 3-2. They also own a 2-1, eight-inning win over Advance.

It's all hands on deck each game for Meadow Heights, which is manifested in Mayfield, a three-year player.

"Last year I didn't hardly pitch at all, but this year we don't have as many people so I kind of had to pitch," said Mayfield, who gave up nine hits, struck out three and walked three over five innings.

Mayfield and the Panthers were giving Puxico, which also entered Friday's game with a 2-4 record, fits for four innings.

"That kid shut us out for a while, and we just got lucky and kept grinding and grinding away," Puxico coach John Simpher said.

Mayfield pitched around four hits over the first three innings with some help from his defense. Freshman catcher Reece Boyd threw out an Indian base stealer in the first inning, strong-armed freshman shortstop Lane Baremore alertly threw to first to double off a base runner in the third inning after catching a pop fly, and moments later junior Jordan Yamnitz lunged to his left to snare a line drive to end the inning.

Mayfield also scored the game's lone run to that point after drawing a leadoff walk in the second inning, moving to second on Justin McGuire's sacrifice bunt, taking third on Spencer Bragg's infield hit and coming home when Boyd's fly ball to shallow left field was dropped for an error.

Puxico tied the game in the fifth after Mayfield issued the leadoff walk to Zach McCoy, who scored on a one-out double by Josh Hale, who left for pinch runner Blake Smith. Stephan Smith walked, and Austin Rodgers followed with a ground ball to freshman Dawson Lindgren at second base. Lindgren opted for a force throw to second base but instead tossed it into left field to score Blake Smith to give Puxico a 2-1 lead and put runners at second and third. Mayfield struck out the next batter for the second out, but No. 4 hitter Seth Luttrell lined a single up the middle to score two more unearned runs for a 4-1 Indians lead.

The Panthers countered with a two-out RBI hit by junior Brendan Welker to left field in the bottom of the inning with runners at first and second, but the rally ended when the runner on first tried to advance to third on the single and was thrown out by a wide margin with Yamnitz, the No. 4 hitter, waiting on deck.

The Indians then chased Mayfield in the sixth, scoring once to regain a three-run lead at 5-2.

Puxico tacked on three insurance runs off Yamnitz in the seventh with three infield hits, a fly ball that a Panthers outfielder lost in the twilight sky for a single and three throwing errors.

"We're a young team. There's a lot of growing up to do as far as baseball goes," Herman said. "We're working hard. The boys are starting to kind of figure things out. We're hitting the ball a lot better than at the beginning of the year, which was hurting us really bad the first couple of games. We've gotten pretty solid pitching throughout our year so far. Defense is probably our best attribute of our team. We're very good defensively. We just threw the ball away. We just lost focus."

Yamnitz, who worked out of the jam he inherited in the sixth, allowed four hits over the final two innings.

Junior Chris Siler pitched a complete game for Puxico to even his record at 1-1. He allowed seven hits, struck out five and walked three.

"This by far is the best he's looked [all season]," Simpher said.

Baremore and Lindgren each had two hits for Meadow Heights.

Puxico finished with 13 hits, led by a three-hit performance by Rodgers. Siler, Chris Dunivan and McCoy all finished with two hits.

Puxico 000 041 3 -- 8 13 1

Meadow Hts. 010 001 1 -- 3 7 4

WP -- Chris Siler (1-1). LP -- Nick Mayfield. 2B -- Josh Hale (P), Justin McGuire (MH). Multiple hits -- Puxico: Austin Rodgers 3-4, Chris Siler 2-4, Chris Dunivan 2-4, Zach McCoy 2-3; Meadow Heights: Lane Baremore 2-4, Dawson Lindgren 2-3.