Savage Horsemen notch two more wins

By any measurement, this first season of Plains-Hot Springs baseball has been a good one.

There have been some rough outings but those seemed distant memories for the Savage Horsemen who swept the final two home games of their first season of varsity baseball, downing St. Ignatius 11-10 on Friday, then pulling out a 7-6 win over visiting Troy Saturday under overdue sunny skies.

In both games, the home standing Savage Horsemen fell behind early, then battled back and took narrow leads. And in both games, with the outcome on the line, Plains-Hot Springs senior Garth Parker pitched shutout innings of relief to pick up the pair of wins and head out on the road with a 4-4 record on the season.

In their home stand opener Friday afternoon at Amundson Sports Complex, the Savage Horsemen fell behind 4-1 to the Bulldogs after one inning of play. St. Ignatius added another run to its total in the top of the second to push their lead to 5-1

In the bottom of the second, Plains took advantage of some shaky Bulldogs pitching and an RBI single by Aiden West to plate three runs and cut the St. Ignatius lead to 5-4. Each team scored a run in the third, making it 6-5 in favor of the visitors.

Then, in the top of the fourth, St. Ignatius erupted for six runs, two of them via RBI singles, the others by throwing errors then two more on a 2RBI triple to center. Plains reliever Jody Page entered the game and shut down the Bulldogs rally, but not before they had built a 10-5 lead going into the bottom of the fifth. Plains added solo runs in the bottom of both the fifth and sixth innings, to pull within 10-7.

Page had limited the Bulldogs to one earned run in his 2.2 innings of work and Parker threw one inning of relief, striking out the side.

Plains used a pair of singles, two walks and a hit batter to tie the game at 10, setting up a single up the middle by Joe Pullen, scoring Page to give the home team a come-from-behind 11-10 victory.

Parker was the winning pitcher of record. Five Savage Horsemen had single RBIs.

St. Ignatius outhit the home team 13-11, but the Bulldogs committed six costly errors to allow the Savage Horsemen to stay in the game and eventually pull out the win.

Saturday afternoon, with temperatures hovering in the mid 70s and above, Plains surrendered four runs to Troy in the top half of the second, only to watch as the Horsemen cut their lead in half with a pair of runs in the bottom of the second.

Plains-Hot Springs tied the game at four with a pair of runs in the bottom of the third, when West singled, stole second and advanced to third on an error by the catcher. West then scored on a dropped third strike call. Page and Parker singled to load the bases, with Page coming home on Parker’s hit up the middle.

Parker was caught in a run down attempting to steal second, ending the inning with the score knotted at four each.

Troy retook the lead in the top of the fifth when they scored one run, giving the Trojans a 5-4 lead.

Plains struck for three runs in the bottom of the fifth, including a run by Pullen who had walked, then scored on a West single and a throwing error. They added two more runs to take a 7-5 lead.

Parker entered the game in relief in the top of the sixth and shut down Troy, then gave up a single run in the sixth before striking out the last two batters he faced during a mini-Troy seventh inning rally that cut the Plains lead to 7-6.

Pullen got the win against Troy, giving up just three hits and striking out six Trojans in a solid relief effort.

Both teams had five hits each for the game. West had two hits and two RBIs in the win over Troy.

The Savage Horsemen take their show on the road this Tuesday (May 2) for a game in Polson against the Pirates. They then travel the evening to Florence for a game against the Falcons Wednesday at 4 p.m.