Richard Parrish | The Lima News
LIMA — From awful to awesome with one swing of the bat.
Down 6-4 to Richmond going into the bottom of the ninth of Tuesday night’s game at Simmons Field, Lima, which had numerous missed scoring opportunities along with some inconsistent pitching throughout the game, needed a major rally to record a win and that is exactly what the Locos got when they loaded the bases and then Justin Rumfield delivered a walk-off grand slam, home run to give the Locos the 8-4 victory against the Jazz.
With the win the Locos, winners of four straight, improve to 13-4. Richmond slipped to 11-7 on the year. The Locos return to action to face Richmond at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“I was just trying to do something for the team,” Rumfield said. “I was looking for something up and I saw he hanged it there and hit on the barrel.”
It was Rumfield’s first home run of the season. Prior to his home run, Rumfield had struck out twice and flied out to right twice.
The Locos opened the final frame with Cade Belyeu and Jack Porter drawing walks. Kolton Schaller was then called on to lay down a bunt which he did and it hugged the foul line just staying fair to load the bases for Rumfield.
“Something with the baseball gods was working for us,” said the Midland College freshman. “It helped us, giving me a little momentum going to the plate and Kolton got the job done and it just helped us out.”
Schaller went 2 for 3 with 2 runs scored and Kyle Ashworth drove in two runs. Connor Ashby, Belyeu and Landon Underhill also drove in runs.
Rumfield added that team chemistry has played a big role in the team’s success the past two weeks that has seen the Locos win their last six out of seven.
“This team is great together and three runs mean nothing to us,”Rumfield said. “This team can be down by 10 and we have the attitude that we are going to win the ballgame.”
Prior to the winning rally, Locos head coach Chad Ehrnsberger admitted the team had played awful.
“I told the assistants before our get-together there I didn’t know what to say” the Locos manager said. “Quite frankly we played awful in all three facets. We had one error but that cost us two runs.
“Our pitching, I mean we walked too many guys, got behind in the count, hit some guys and offensively we weren’t having good at bats but in that last inning we had four great at-bats. That is the funny thing about baseball you can be bad the whole time … but that is why you play nine innings. Fortunately for us we came through but that was a game we should not have won.
Locos starter Landon Price struggled with control in his first three frames but kept the damage in check despite walking five and hitting a batter. He did fan four and was hurt by an error that led to the first two Jazz runs.
“He (Landon) is getting behind hitters,” Ehrnsberger said. “As far as why he is doing that I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s just so many innings and he is starting to get tired. I don’t know if he is changing something without us seeing it. But that is the biggest difference and that is he is getting behind hitters.”
Reliever Alex Figueroa battled through the next three innings, giving up one run while walking three and giving up two hits, but in the seventh, the Cochise College product surrendered a home run, followed by a solo shot, giving the Jazz a 6-4 advantage.
“It was a little erratic because again he walked quite a few guys as well and I think he hit two guys,” Ehrnsberger said. “It wasn’t what we were used to from either one of those two. He gave up the two homers and I am OK with home runs because they are going to happen.
“What irks me are the walks because with walks it is tough to play behind that as a defense. You get flat-footed and I don’t want to say you lose interest but are not kind of into it mentally when it seems like every pitch is a ball. You are going to give up the home runs but we have to do something about the walks and eliminate the hit by pitches and hopefully we can figure that out.”
Hunter Parker, who collected the win, tossed two perfect innings as he fanned two,
For the night, Locos pitching gave up nine walks and two hit batsmen.
As for the game-winning home run, Ehrnsberger said he was happy that Rumfield made contact with two strikes, something he said the team has struggled with all year.
“With a guy on third base and less than two outs we strike out over half the time which is really bad. A decent percentage is to score the guy 70 percent of the time and we were almost striking out 70 percent of the time, and he (Rumfield) actually had one of those earlier in the game. As soon he got to two strikes I was just hoping he would make contact and put the ball in play and score one run we would still have a chance to score more so I was just happy about that.”
Offensively, the Locos’ pattern of late is that they struggle to score in the early innings with the team not collecting hits until after the fifth frame. For the game, the Locos left 11 stranded and in the first five frames left seven stranded.
“We are playing great baseball from the fifth inning on, Ehrnsberger said. “In a way that’s good because guys don’t give up and when it matters the most they are getting the job done. It is also bad because why are we not playing well the first five innings? Is it something I need to change as far as getting these guys ready to play or what? That is something we have to figure out both as a staff and a team because if we play the full nine innings that I think we are capable of we are going to win a lot of games.”
