Tigers fall to Joplin, 3-1

JOPLIN ---- The Nevada Tigers baseball team was defeated by Joplin High School, Tuesday, 3-1.

The loss is the fifth straight for Nevada, as they fall to 5-6.

"Our offense continued to struggle," Nevada coach Danny Penn said. "We worked a lot in practice on Monday on situational hitting. A big part of that was looking for a pitch early in an at-bat that the player can hit hard.

"If our hitter doesn't get that pitch, we want him to take it and see if he gets a better one later in the at-bat. It's a hard lesson to learn because so many of these guys have grown up with the mentality of hitting anything in the strike-zone. That's a great approach with two strikes, but we want them to be more selective early in the count.

"On a positive note, we cut down on our pop-ups, which were a major problem last week at Carthage," he said. On another positive (note), I was happy with our seventh-inning performance. We knew we needed at least three runs, and we took a smart, patient approach (at the plate).

"We had a double, a walk, a single, and I was happy with our approach there. We need some of that patience to show up earlier (in games)."

Nevada's Tyler Ketterman pitched a six-inning complete game, allowing four hits, two walks, while striking out four. Three runners crossed the plate on Ketterman, all going as unearned runs.

"He did a great job of attacking the strike zone and letting our defense help," Penn said. "It was his best outing of the season on the mound, and it allowed us to stay in this game.

"For the most part, our defense did a good job of backing him up. We had a couple of costly errors that led to Joplin scoring runs. One run scored because we got lazy with a tag and the ball got kicked out of our glove allowing a run to score. Another error, on a weak ground ball, allowed Joplin to get their lead-off batter on, and he eventually came around to score. We also should have had two additional outs, but the calls didn't go our way. However, that's baseball, and good teams find a way to get around those issues."

The Nevada junior varsity baseball team fell to Joplin, 14-5.