Coach Jeremy Richey says his Seymour baseball team can’t continue to give up unearned runs and expect to add marks in the win column.
The Owls committed three errors that aided in Bedford North Lawrence scoring three unearned runs to leave American Legion Field with an 8-6 win Monday afternoon.
Richey said the Owls didn’t make enough defensive plays.
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“I just told the guys it’s the same story as Thursday night (against Jefferesonville),” he said. “For whatever reason we don’t come out ready to play and give up four in the top of the second. But, you know the thing I’m proud of is with this group, we’re making some adjustments, especially offensively. We come back and score three, and we answered back in three of the innings they scored runs, which is big for us.
“The talk tonight was once we get it back to 5-5, our mistakes is what allowed them to score after that. We have to look at plays we didn’t make tonight.”
The Owls made errors in the second, fifth and sixth innings that led to unearned runs for the Stars.
“We had a couple throwing errors which we can control, and a dropped fly ball,” Richey said. “There were some bad hops out there tonight. We can live with that. R.J. (Kleber) had one over his head. You live with hops like that. We have to be able to throw to a partner and we have to be able to catch fly balls.”
After neither team scored in the first inning, the Stars scored four times in the top of the second with the big blow being a two-run homer by Dalton Nikirk. The Owls committed an error later in the inning that enabled one unearned run to score.
The Owls got three of those urns in the bottom of the inning. Jake Roberts drew a walk, Brayden Wilson walked and was replaced by courtesy runner Ezra Barr. Braden Christopher followed with a home run over the fence in left field to make it a 4-3 game.
The Stars scored single runs in the third and fifth innings, and two in the sixth, while the Owls scored one each in the third, fourth and sixth.
Devil Hill singled in the third and scored on a hit by Wilson. Michio Sekiguchi homered to left in the fourth, and Sekiguchi walked in the sixth and scored on a single by Matthew Moore.
Three SHS pitchers combined to allow 13 hits, strike out five and walk two.
“Matthew, this was his third time out there and hopefully we keep making him better, and we keep getting ahead because we don’t have anybody with lights-out stuff that is going to throw by people,” Richey said. “We’ve got to be able to locate and we’ve got to get ahead, because when we got behind the ball got pretty big for them at times. It’s frustrating when you make some mistakes when you get behind. We’ve got to eliminate those and really play with some confidence defensively then I think our pitchers will take that next step.”
Eight different Owls had one hit apiece.
“We’re becoming the offensive team that I thought we could be,” Richey said. “We get a home run from our seven batter and we get a home run from our nine batter. With this group, once we get everything rolling, we’ve got hitters all the way down the line up. We’ve kind of reversed from a couple weeks ago where we weren’t hitting, but we played pretty well defensively.
“Now we’re making some mistakes defensively but our offense is really starting to come together. It’s a process. We’ve got to play better defensively. We can’t keep giving away runs.”
The Owls (3-5) will host Madison today.