Aidan Gorman’s opposite field home run in the second turned out to a big winning blow in Friday’s 6-5 win over Tipp. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Two all-league pitching candidates struggled with command, but impressively hung around to give their respective teams a chance to win…Troy outlasts Tipp to sweep the 25-A series.
Tipp City, OH – Troy’s Aidan Gordon thought he had hit the game’s first pitch Friday for a home run…a towering drive to right field at Tipp’s old ballpark that had to fight a 2o mile per hour wind if it was to leave the ballpark.
The wind won, but Gordon salvaged a double out of it, and later scored to pace the Trojans to a 2-0 first inning lead over Tipp, and the Red Devils’ #1 starting pitcher Cayden McKinney.
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That was only the beginning of McKinney’s issues, a commit to play at Northern Kentucky University next fall, as Troy came back in the top of the second and tatooed him for three more runs and three hits, including an opposite-field home run by Gordon, that left the Red Devils’ pitcher shaking his head over what more could go wrong.
As it turned out, the worst was behind him.
Like all good pitchers, if you don’t get them early you might not get them at all. And McKinney would end up pitching a complete game, albeit in a losing cause, as Troy held on to win, 6-5, improving their record to 13-1, and 5-1 in the conference.
Tipp, who started the week with a 12-3 record, fell to 12-5, and 7-2 (both losses to Troy) in the MVL River standings.
But here’s why you play seven innings in a high school baseball game.
Down 5-0, Tipp came right back in the bottom of the second inning to plate 4 runs on 3 hits off Troy starter Jake Reinhardt, taking advantage of a couple of Troy errors, to close the deficit to 5-4. And suddenly, what was anticipated as being a premier pitching battle, began to look like backyard wiffle ball.
The issue?
Location…location…location…Tipp’s Cayden McKinney reacts to Aidan Gorman’s two-run homer on a ball up in the strike zone in the second inning.
Location…location…location, like the real estate people claim, as both McKinney and Reinhardt were guilty of making mistakes in the strike zone. Throw the ball knee high and you get ground balls. Through the ball waist high and you give up line drive shots to the deepest parts of the ballpark.
“That’s what I was doing,” said McKinney, later. “I was up in the zone. I don’t know why, I just was. But once I got to the third and fourth I figured it out and began to get the ball down. My stuff was working well pretty much the whole time, I just couldn’t throw the ball where I wanted.”
Ditto Jake Reinhardt, who would eventually see Tipp come back in the third to tie the game at 5-5 on a double by Brady Liskey and a following base hit by Bryce Eckert.
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“Jake threw 101 pitches last Tuesday against Butler,” said Troy assistant coach Heath Murray. “And we wanted to give him some extra rest. The pitch count doesn’t bother me as much as the layoff [now]…and we probably should have gotten him a couple of easy bullpens. So I think he was rusty today with his location. They had four 0-2 counts and all four got on base, along with him hitting a batter. His strength is putting the ball wherever we want it, and he wasn’t able to do that today. Everything was a little off, but he battled.”
After surrendering four runs in the second, Troy’s Jake Rinehardt rebounded to pitch a complete game five-hitter, with 8 strikeouts.
And ended up winning when Troy came back in the top of the fourth and scored what would end up being the winning run…on an infield error that put Colton Akins on base, a stolen base, a ground out, and another ground ball out that eventually scored him…6-5, Troy.
Impressively, after Tipp’s lone run in the third, Reinhardt would right himself to pitch the final four innings allowing no runs on one hit (a double by Liskey in the fifth), striking out three and walking one. For the game, a complete-game 5 hitter with 8 strikeouts!
After Troy’s go-ahead run in fourth, McKinney settled down to pitch a scoreless, hitless, fifth, sixth, and two outs deep into the seventh, striking out 3.
And while it didn’t seem such a big deal in the second inning, Aidan Gorman’s measure of redemption with his opposite-field home run came back to be a very big deal, part of a two-hit day (both extra bases), while scoring two runs.
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“McKinney’s tough, a really good pitcher,” said Gorman, post-game. “I was looking for the fastball to start the game because I thought he would use that to get ahead, both at bats. I turned on it, thinking it really was going to go out of the park.
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“We started hot today, but when he began to get the ball down and hit his spots you saw the real McKinney. He started throwing some gross breaking balls and got us in his count. We got cold and they started scoring. The momentum changed, but I thought we ended up handling it well.”
An omen, perhaps, for a Troy team who continues to become more offensive with each passing day.
And a team that seems to find a different way to win with each passing game – hitting, pitching, and defense.
“Jake wasn’t his best today, for sure,” said coach Ty Welker. “But he battled. He gave us a chance. And we continued to get good at bats and the fast start with four hits in the first two innings off a really good pitcher in Cayden McKinney.”
And with two of the area’s best on the mound, it definitely wasn’t the game that a good, equally partisan crowd came to watch.
But as it turned out, another game that Troy found a way to win.
Another omen, perhaps!
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