Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
WABASH - For Derek Ring, these types of performances are beginning to get commonplace. The Manchester Squires' starting pitcher scattered five hits over five innings and shut down the North Miami bats in the Wabash Baseball 2A Sectional opener. Manchester went on to win 10-0 and will now face Wabash for the right to go to the sectional championship game.
For the Squires, this season has been a far cry from last year when Manchester won just three games. This year, the Squires have improved by 13 wins and still aren't done.
"We seemed a little tight," Manchester head coach Ron Eberly said. "We were a little nervous and weren't talking much. Maybe now we'll loosen up a bit."
Those kinds of actions can be almost expected from a team that is so young, with just four seniors, and has so many expectations compared to last year.
But while the rest of the Squires were shaking off the jitters, seniors Ring and Chris Good carried Manchester.
In the top of the first, Ring, who entered the game with an ERA of 1.14, allowed a single to Kenny Hanson, but closed out the inning when Matt Spalding hit a grounder that Hanson could not avoid.
Good got the offense going in the Manchester half of the first by getting a single and moving to second on a sacrifice bunt. He then moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on a single from Tom Hardy to give the Squires a 1-0 lead.
It stayed that way until the third as Ring worked out of a jam in the second by striking out the last two batters of the inning and got three in a row in the third.
In the bottom of the third, Manchester broke the game open despite hitting just two balls out of the infield. Lee Shaffer led off the inning with an infield single and Good and Mitch Eads were both hit by pitches to load the bases with nobody out.
Ring followed by driving home one run with a bloop single that found a hole between the third baseman, the shortstop and the left fielder.
Hardy opened it up with what seemed to be nothing more than a sacrifice fly, but by the time North Miami was down throwing the ball around, the Squires had plated two runs and had another run on third. That runner, Ring, eventually scored on a wild pitch to make the score 5-0.
In the bottom of the fourth, Manchester got five runs, three on a bases loaded double from sophomore Brady Burgess. The other two runs scored when Ring and Hardy were hit by pitches with the bases loaded.
North Miami's pitcher, Kenny Hanson, did not have his best stuff, lasting just 3-2/3 innings and allowing eight earned runs. Hanson had earlier this season broken the state record for strikeouts in a single game when he whiffed 23 batters in 10 innings.
"We hadn't seen Hanson before," Eberly said. "The guys knew about that outing, but we didn't talk about it."
On the other side, Ring improved to 6-1 on the year with his complete-game performance. Nobody on the Squires had two hits, but both Hardy and Burgess had three RBIs and Good scored three times, just what a team wants from its leadoff hitter.
"We got some help tonight from North Miami," Eberly said. "But we've helped others at times this year, so I guess it was our turn."
Manchester (16-13) will play Wabash (12-14) Thursday at Wabash High School beginning at 6:30 p.m. The Apaches beat Northfield in the second game Monday 5-0. The winner will then play in the sectional championship at Wabash Saturday at 1 p.m.
