End of the line: Tigers derailed by Carl Junction in district tourney, 10-0

SENECA — A rugged season has come to a close for the Nevada Tiger baseball team.

Saturday’s 10-0 (six inning) loss to No. 3 seed Carl Junction in the opening-round of the Class 4 District 12 tournament was the end of the line for Nevada, as the sixth-seeded Tigers concluded the 2019 campaign, 3-19 overall.

The contest was bookended by a pair of big frames, as Carl Junction plated five in the first inning and five in the sixth, en route to the run-rule victory. This was Nevada’s third loss to Carl Junction this season, as the Tigers were outscored, 25-5.

“You can’t do it, but if you wipe away the first and sixth innings, we played a 0-0 game,” explained Nevada head coach Danny Penn. “As we’ve seen all season, we have the ability to play solid baseball, we’ve just struggled to do it for a full game.”

Junior hurler Grant Miller, Nevada’s starting pitcher, was victimized by five Nevada errors. Miller allowed five (unearned) runs, while striking out one and walking one over 4 1/3 frames of work. Nevada junior Noah Cheaney, in his lone inning of work, was tagged for five runs (three earned) and four hits in the sixth, while walking a pair of batters.

“Grant did a really nice job of battling on the mound, battling through some back issues,” Penn said.

Added Penn: “Noah didn’t necessarily pitch poorly, he was just missing his spots by a couple of inches, and they put good swings on those pitches.”

Carl Junction starter Alex Baker was sharp, yielding three hits while striking out seven across six shutout innings and notching the victory.

“(Baker) did a really good job of commanding his pitches,” Penn said. “Even if he fell behind in a count, he wasn’t overwhelmed — just got back on the mound, and made quality pitches to get back into the count. We hit too many lazy fly balls, and failed to square up enough pitches.”

Penn indicated he felt his squad was ready to hit its stride in district-tournament play.

“It was an unfortunate way to end our season,” he said. “We had a couple of really good practice days leading into Saturday, and I felt like we were in a good position. We went quickly in the top of the first. Their first batter reached on an error, and that kind of set a tone, unfortunately. The next batter walked, and then they scored two runs on a little bloop-single over the shortstop’s head.”