Monsters silenced by Rapids’ pitching

The Rhinelander River Monsters were unable to figure out Wisconsin Rapids’ Blaine Wahlen on Sunday. 

The Rapids right-hander fanned 13 batters over eight innings and scattered three hits as the Red Hawks took down Rhinelander 7-1 in Dairyland League play in Wisconsin Rapids.

The River Monsters (4-5, 4-4 Dairyland) tried to play catchup all day after Rapids tagged Rhinelander starter Quinn Lamers for five runs in the first inning. But the Monsters were held hitless from the third inning on as Wahlen sat down 15 consecutive batters between the third in eighth innings. 

“We had way too many looking third strikes today. We just struck out too much and it’s hard to score runs when you have that many strikeouts,” River Monsters manager Todd Johnson said. “You could tell we were getting fooled because those third strikes we were looking at, from a coaching standpoint, they almost looked like they were right down the middle, yet they were fooling us. He had four different pitches he was throwing and his command was great.”

While Wahlen was spot on, Lamers struggled with command early as the Red Hawks jumped out to the lead. After giving up a leadoff triple to Brennan Huber in the first, he hit Nathan Krommenakker with a 1-2 pitch before walking Payton Nelson and Caden Sengbusch back-to-back to give Rapids its first run. Tyler Beyer added a sacrifice fly, Ryan Sering hit an RBI single, Sengbusch scored when Gavin Obremski reached on a throwing error by Joe Schneider at second and Garrett Huber added an RBI fielder’s choice to give the Red Hawks an early 5-0 lead. 

Rhinelander’s lone run came in the second as Schneider reached on a fielding error by third-baseman Jordan Tibbetts and then scored when Tibbetts couldn’t handle a throw from right field as Schneider moved from first to third on a single by Josh Randolph. 

Lamers settled in after the first inning and did not allow another run until the fifth when Beyer walked and eventually scored after Schneider overthrew to first on a potential double play attempt. Lamers worked around six walks in the loss as he allowed six runs, four earned, on four hits with a pair of strikeouts. 

Randolph pitched the final three innings for Rhinelander, allowing a run on three hits. That came courtesy of a two-out double by Sengbusch in the sixth that scored Nelson. 

“Quinn did pitch well. We just got into a little trouble in the first inning and then things stabilized. We just couldn’t get anything to chip back at the lead,” Johnson said. “I though Quinn gave a great effort and Josh, when he came in, he threw well also. We had pretty good defense today, which is normally the case with us. You expect that we’re going to play good defense.” 

Nelson worked a scoreless ninth for Wisconsin Rapids, striking out two more batters.

A Rhinelander offense that scored 35 runs over its first four games cooled off during the month of June. The Monsters have scored just 17 runs in their last five games and have struck out 31 times in their last two games. 

“You’d like to see more consistent offensive production as opposed to a couple of innings where it shows up and then we lose it for half the game,” Johnson said. 

Rhinelander fell to fourth in the Dairyland Large standings with the loss, a half-game behind third-place Whittlesey, which swept a doubleheader from Merrill on Sunday.

The Monsters are home this coming Sunday to take on Merrill in Dairyland League play. Rhinelander fended off the winless Rangers  11-9 when the teams played at Athletic Park back in May. First pitch is slated for noon at Stafford Field.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].