Coach Jeremy Richey said he saw improvement from his Seymour baseball team as it split a pair of games Saturday at American Legion Field.
The Owls rallied to edge Lowell, Michigan, 6-5 in the first game before falling to New Albany 8-2 later in the day.
“I thought we took a step forward today as a team,” Richey said. “I think some of the things we did, especially with picking each other up, we looked like a baseball team today. Leaving here Thursday night we didn’t feel that way.
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“We’re not happy with 1-1 but we feel a lot better about the way we played today. We’re getting better. We’re still making mistakes, we still had dropped fly balls, we still had throwing errors, we’re still not putting a lot of things together offensively but we’re getting better against good opponents so we feel like we’re leaving here a better team than we were on Thursday night.”
The Owls built up a 3-0 lead against Lowell before the Arrows bunched three hits, and took advantage of two walks and two errors to take a 5-3 lead in the fifth inning.
R.J. Kleber opened the bottom of the first with a single and later scored on an error. Takumi Nishiwaki walked in the third and rode home on a double by Matthew Moore, and Jake Roberts walked in the fourth and scored on a balk.
Kleber led off the seventh inning with a walk, and after the next two batters flied out to right field, Devin Hill walked, and Roberts followed with his second home run of the season over the left field fence for the walkoff win.
Richey said victory was a big lift for his team.
“The way that happened is good for us because we’re up 3-0 scoring in three different innings and get some things going and then all of a sudden the wheels fall off and we give up five and it looks like we’re out of it, and then get a couple guys on base in the seventh and Jake runs into a two-strike pitch and hits it out of here.
“The way that we had to win that is good for us because we kind of put ourselves in that situation.”
New Albany defeated Lowell 10-5 before taking on SHS.
The Bulldogs scored three runs in the first inning against the Owls to lead all the way.
Kleber led off the bottom of the first with single and scored on a sacrifice fly by Moore.
With two out and nobody on base in the fifth, Michio Sekiguchi walked. He advanced for second on a hit, and scored on a throwing error.
The Owls had five hits in the opener and four hits against New Albany.
Roberts had a hit in each game, he scored two runs and had three RBIs.
Kleber had two hits against Lowell and one hit against New Albany and scored three runs.
Moore, Hunter Ahlbrand, Nishiwaki and Chase Miles had the other hits.
The Owls struck out 11 times and walked five times in the two games, and Seymour pitchers combined for 14 strike outs and five walks.
Braden Christopher pitched the first five innings against New Albany and allowed eight hits and five earned runs.
“The pitching is getting better,” Richey said. “In the second game we gave up eight runs but there’s some runs there that we shouldn’t have given up. I thought Braden threw a good game, he kept us in the game, and then I thought Jake came in and gave us a couple good innings, too, so we’re getting better.”
“That’s the goal right now that we’re trying to make sure that moving in that direction. We feel a lot better going into next week.”
The Owls (2-3) will travel to Brownstown Central Tuesday for a 6 p.m. game.