Butler’s Starting Senior pitcher Hunter Richardson pitched for 6 innings, gave up 7 hits, 3 earned runs, six strikeouts and 0 walks. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie McMaken Wright)
What was more perfect than the crystal blue sky at the Dayton Dragons’ Day-Air Ballpark? Butler’s record, now 10-0 after a 5-4 win over Troy. Koby Dues crushed a triple, then scored the go-ahead run in the sixth inning, his third of the game.
Dayton, Ohio – Koby Dues stepped into the box at Day-Air Ballpark with big things in mind to lead off the top of the sixth.
Alan Brads is a contributing columnist and writes sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.
“I was thinking I had to do a job,” Dues said. “I had to stay on it and hit the ball hard.”
In his previous two at-bats he failed to make base-hit contact, but a pair of crippling errors by Troy’s defense allowed him to get aboard and score both times.
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Now tied at four, Dues couldn’t leave it up to chance.
He ripped a fastball to straightaway centerfield to the warning track. He rounded first, rounded second, then put it in cruise control for a stand-up triple.
Second baseman Paxton Dwenger cranked a single to score Dues from third, the eventual winning run.
After scoring the go-ahead run, Dues relieved senior Hunter Richardson after six innings on the mound and recorded a save in the 5-4 victory over the Trojans.
Richardson amassed his third win of the season, allowing seven hits and three earned runs, while consistently tossing 86 mph with command.
Koby Dues rips a fastball to the warning track in center field, which landed him to third for a stand up triple.
Butler completed the season sweep of Troy and moved to 10-0 (5-0) on the season, an appropriately fiery start to grace the Dragons’ Stadium.
“It’s a great venue, good crowd, wish it was our home field,” Butler Coach Trent Dues said.
“Playing here was an awesome experience,” Koby Dues said. “And I got to play with the best guys, there’s no one else I would rather get to do it with.”
The Aviators claimed the second of 17 games to be played in the Dragons High School Baseball Showcase, following the lead of the Anna Rockets, who beat Fort Loramie on Tuesday.
Dragons, Rockets, Aviators … is flight capability be a prerequisite for winning at Day-Air Ballpark? A conversation for a different day, perhaps Friday, when the Fairlawn Jets take the field for game three.
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But fielding and throwing the ball cleanly really was requisite. Three of Butler’s five runs were aided on the basepaths by Troy’s fielding blunders. The Trojans committed three errors, not typically a number that would do irreversible damage, but they couldn’t have come at worse moments.
Second baseman Paxton Dwenger tags out Colton Akins (Troy) on an attempted steal.
“Our pitcher, Hayden Frey, did a heck of a job,” Troy Coach Ty Welker said. “He’s supposed to get us ground balls, and he gave us ground balls. We’re supposed to make outs. And it didn’t seem like a lot but it was one here and one there, and it was a one-run game.”
They got away with an error in the first thanks to Frey’s handiwork on the mound. He pitched four innings, struck out 10 batters and allowed five hits and a walk.
But the defense behind him couldn’t quite hold up its end of the bargain. In the third, Dues reached with a leadoff error, and Max Rubins hit a bases-loaded single to score Dues and Cross Johnson, erasing Troy’s early 2-0 lead.
“We’ve not spent a lot of time playing from behind,” Trent Dues said. “But we did against Troy the other night, and we did against Troy again today, so [our response] was a good sign.”
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Bad got worse in the fourth. Troy led 3-2 in the top of the fourth, but an errant throw to first base allowed Richardson to score from second, and Dues to take his place there. He scored the tying run from second on a Jackson Schilling single.
Frey escaped the jam from there by collecting his ninth and tenth strikeouts of the evening, the only consistent method the Trojans had to retire batters.
Butler’s Max Rubins out-ran the ball to first base for a single.
Troy moved on from Frey, and Devin Schwartz, Andrew Westfall and Aiden Gorman pitched the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings, respectively. The trio did well in relief, giving up four hits and a walk, but Dues’ gash to deep center made it all for naught.
As a member of the Aviator faithful behind home plate refrained, “It just takes one.”
Even so, it won’t be a day Gorman will soon forget. He went 3/4 at the plate, all three hits coming against the UK commit, Richardson. Trailing 4-3 in the fifth, he jumped on a fastball, hammered it to right field, and carried the wall at 338 without a doubt to tie the game.
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If the Trojans had pulled the upset, Gorman would’ve been the obvious pick for MVP, an award that came with a $50 gift card courtesy of the Dragons. And he had his chance to work some seventh-inning magic. With the tying run on first and two outs, there was no one else Troy would’ve rather had in the box than Gorman, who was 3/3 at the time.
Butler’s third baseman snow cones the baseball but holds on for a double play.
He blasted another one to left center field, suspending the Butler crowd in terror for a moment until the ball fluttered down harmlessly and met leather for the final out.
Troy sinks to 2-6 (2-3) on the season with this installment of its continuing trend of close losses. An Ohio Hall of Fame basketball coach said teams always lose close before they learn to win close. If that holds true on the baseball diamond, the Trojans have a chance to turn the train around before they run out of track.
They’ll take on Sidney (4-6) next, which, for what it’s worth, got manhandled 12-2 and 24-5 by Butler, a far cry from Troy’s cumulative 11-7 deficit in the two-game series with the Aviators.
The next big challenger to Butler’s perfect record is Beavercreek, which looks threatening at 9-1.
But even if perfection ends Saturday afternoon in Beavercreek, the sky remains the limit for the Aviators.
With the fire-breather Richardson on the mound, they’ve got a fighting chance against just about anyone, but they won’t have to prove it against the GWOC in the postseason.
Dues was overjoyed when seven divisions of high school baseball became a reality.
“We’ve been praying for this,” Dues said in a January 2024 interview.
Ask and you shall receive. Maybe he’s been praying fervently about getting wins in the regular season too.
Or maybe they’re just one heck of a baseball team.
Troy senior Hayden Frey pitched 4 innings, gave up 5 hits, 4 earned runs, 10 strikeouts and one walk.
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