Chase Chopin whoops it up after his game-tying, two-run triple in the sixth inning brought Alder all the way back from a 7-4 deficit to get even. (PressPros Feature Photos by Sheri Hooley).
It was sloppy at times and downright stress-inducing at others, but Jonathan Alder found a way to shed a pesky rival and defend its No. 1 state ranking in Division II while reaching the regional semifinals in extra innings.
Mason, OH. – Greg Kennedy was not quite as perfect as the last time Jonathan Alder entrusted him to pitch with its season on the line.
But the Pioneers’ senior right-hander was flawless on the mound when required and clutch at the plate when needed in JA’s 8-7, extra-inning advance to the Division II regional finals Thursday afternoon at Mason High School.
Coming off a perfect game in Alder’s 2-0 district championship win over Central Buckeye Conference rival London last week, Kennedy this time came on in relief in the bottom of the seventh with another CBC nemesis, Kenton Ridge, threatening a walk-off upset of the team it lost to twice in the regular season.
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“I was ready,” said Kennedy, who jogged in from right field to spell Ashton Martin, who had relieved starter Tyler Barton in a five-run Kenton Ridge fifth inning. “Everyone who pitches wants the ball in that situation.”
Well, maybe not everybody, since Kennedy inherited Kenton Ridge runners at second and third base with only one out in a 7-7 tie. The Cougars’ No. 3 hitter, Caleb Obee, awaited at the plate, with clean-up man, Jake Beard, on deck.
A base hit, or sacrifice fly, or hard- or seeing-eye ground ball through a drawn-in infield would have ended it.
Garrett Roach got Alder off to a fast start with a two-run, first-inning HR and helped a winning rally with a ninth-inning single.
Alder had already intentionally walked Obee twice in his four at-bats, which made sense both times, since he singled in his two other plate appearances.
But this time, Pioneers’ coach Craig Kyle let Kennedy go after Obee, who flied out to shallow right field, holding the runners.
“I have a lot of trust and belief in him,” Kyle said of Kennedy. “He’s been around for three years and has pitched in a lot of big games. He wanted the ball there. We didn’t want to have to have him come on in that situation, but we had to win the game.”
Kennedy gave Alder that chance by striking out Beard with curveball, denying the Cougars a game-deciding scoring opportunity much like the one they also minimized in the bottom of the first.
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After the Pioneers’ started fast, taking a 2-0 lead on Garrett Roach’s mammoth two-run blast to left field, Kenton Ridge used a walk and two singles to cut that margin in half with the meat of its order coming to the plate and no one out.
Barton, though, escaped further damage with strikeouts looking on Beard and No. 5 hitter Brayden Grimm, then induced an inning-ending foul out from Miles Miesse.
Brayden Grimm’s RBI double gave Kenton Ridge momentum and put Alder in comeback mode.
“Early in the game, we left a lot of runners on base,” Kenton Ridge coach Aaron Shaffer said. “If we could have gotten that one key hit we needed…we were looking for that big two-out hit. Then we had it right there in the seventh and just couldn’t quite get the fly ball deep enough.”
Alder scored twice more in the second on Chase Chopin’s RBI single and Grant Home’s squeeze bunt, only to have Kenton Ridge score again in its half of the inning.
That 4-2 Pioneers’ lead prevailed until Barton got into trouble in the Kenton Ridge fifth, yielding to Martin, an Ohio State commit already, despite being just a junior.
Martin, though, didn’t have his best stuff, hitting two batters and further compounding things with an error on a bunt. Alder tossed in a missed chance to end the inning on a double-play bouncer up the middle, bobbling the tailor-made twin-killing just long enough for the runner to beat the throw at first and allow Kenton Ridge to score the go-ahead run, 5-4.
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Obee’s two-run single bumped the Kenton Ridge lead to 7-4 before the Pioneers could escape the carnage, which included five runs on three hits, an error, two hit batsmen, a walk and a passed ball.
Suddenly, the state’s No. 1 team in Division II appeared on the verge of doing what it lamented the entire off-season, exiting the tournament via the sort of sloppy all-around play that doomed Alder in a district championship loss to Bloom Carroll last spring.
“You get this far in the tournament in a one-game thing where every pitch counts, the team that makes the least mistakes sometimes ends up winning,” Kyle said. “We had every opportunity to fold in the fifth inning when they scored five, but our guys didn’t flinch, they kept coming back and they controlled their response to the adversity.”
Greg Kennedy came up big for the Pioneers in relief, shutting down a Kenton Ridge threat to walk off an upset winner in the seventh and retiring his final out here in the ninth on an easy grounder back to the mound.
Singles from Kennedy, Andy Yoder and Cam Potter in the top of the sixth tightened the score to 7-5, then Chopin chased Beard with a tying two-run triple to right field.
“The bottom of our order really came up big there,” said Chopin, the Pioneers’ lead-off man. “They put me in a position where all I had to do was hit the ball hard. I figured if I did that, it’s eventually going to get down.”
Alder went quietly in the seventh and eighth, and Kennedy ended the only Kenton Ridge threat quickly with a pick-off that negated a Cougars’ lead-off single in the eighth.
Martin singled to start the ninth for the Pioneers. Roach failed twice to get down a sacrifice bunt, so Kyle sent Martin on a stolen base attempt with the count 1-2 and Roach promptly singled to left, sending Martin to third.
One out later, Alder tried its third squeeze play of the game, but Kennedy also failed to get a bunt down and fell behind in the count, 0-2.
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His subsequent ground ball to deep shortstop scored Martin with the eventual game-winning run, making it easy to forget the pickoff of Kennedy at first that ended the inning.
With only 12 pitches left on his allotment of 30 deliveries to end the Kenton Ridge ninth and preserve the right to start Friday in the regional title game, Kennedy got a strikeout, a groundout back to him and then a 1-1 count on the next hitter before the buzzer sounded on his afternoon.
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Potter, who had already played third base and shortstop, besides going 3-for-3 with an RBI and two runs scored out of the ninth spot in the order, came on to get the save on just two pitches.
“We’re a team that fights,” Potter said. “We go play-by-play, pitch-by-pitch. We don’t give up. We never thought we weren’t going to lose this game.”
Kennedy will start the regional final against Badin, which cruised to a 4-0 victory over Cincinnati Indian Hill in the other semifinal.
Badin has not given up a run in its last four tournament wins.
Kennedy has faced the minimum through at least his last 28 batters over two games, getting the win each time in spectacular fashion, once as a starter and against Kenton Ridge in relief.
“I’m just honored my coach had the confidence in me to put me in right there so I could have the chance to do what I did,” Kennedy said. “That’s truly awesome.
“I knew I couldn’t win the game for us there in the seventh, but I had to give us a chance to win. To be able to get the job done with all that was at stake adds a lot of layers to it.”
Kenton Ridge’s Braden Smith slides safely into third base, from which he would rise and score, after the throw eludes Alder’s Cam Potter.
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