Free bases cost Hodag baseball vs. Everest

The Rhinelander High School baseball team had to earn every base it got on Tuesday. It couldn’t say the same for its opponent as D.C. Everest slowly pulled away to an 8-0 victory at Stafford Field in non-conference play.

Coach Joe Waksmonski said, by his estimation, the Hodags (1-10, 1-5 Great Northern) allowed 19 free bases in a variety of ways — either walks, hit batsmen, wild pitches, passed balls or errors. Everest, on the other hand, did not allow a single freebie, which ultimately proved to be the difference.

“For us, the story of the game was just all the free bases we gave them,” he said. “We gave them 19 bases. Conversely, they played a perfect game. They didn’t have a single walk, didn’t hit anyone, no errors, no wild pitches or passed balls to allow our runners to advance. They were flawless tonight.

“They were able to make some outstanding plays defensively. Conversely, we had outfielders trying to catch the ball and diving, but the ball would hit in the glove and pop out. We’d have a line drive hit in the infield that would pop out of a glove. They made those plays and we didn’t tonight.”

Everest slowly pulled away, scoring twice each in the second and fifth innings before putting the game away with a four-run seventh. Meanwhile, Rhinelander could muster only five hits off Everest pitcher Logan Cherek, who struck out 10 in a complete-game shutout.

One of those free bases bit the Hodags in the second as Jack Vercimak singled and then scored when Cole Van Slyke reached on an error. Van Slyke later scored on a one-out single by Andrew Cotter.

Everest tacked on a pair of runs in the fifth. Pierson MacDonald was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning, stole second and then scored following an overthrow to third after a wild pitch. Colin Ebersold reached on a fielder’s choice later in the inning and eventually scored on an RBI groundout by Nate Langbehn.

Dylan Vanderbunt took the loss for Rhinelander, allowing seven runs on eight hits with a walk and five strikeouts over 6 1/3 innings. He left the game after giving up an RBI one-out single to Ebersold and a double to Langbehn in the seventh.

“I thought he did a great job throwing tonight. The final line doesn’t look really good, but he only had the one walk. He did hit two guys, but I thought he kept them off balance,” Waksmonski said. “A lot of their hitters were out on their front foot. They weren’t hitting the ball solid. They found a couple of holes and a couple of balls did fall in. We had some chances to get some gloves on the ball, but we didn’t complete the catch. I thought he did a great job on the mound, considering.”

Vercimak hit an RBI single and Cotter added a two-run single later in the inning, both off reliever Kaden Vanney.

Meanwhile, Rhinelander got only one runner into scoring position the entire game. The Hodags got back-to-back singles by Seth Nofftz and Vanderbunt in the bottom of the first, but left them stranded after a strikeout by Vanney, a fly out by Adrian Patrone and a strikeout by Max Ratty. 

Vanderbunt went 3-for-3 at the plate, extending his streak of games with two or more hits to five.

“He’s hitting the ball hard over the infielders’ heads. Some of our guys are hitting the ball, they think, hard, but they’re really just fly balls. Dylan’s hitting true line drives,” Waksmonski said. “We’re hoping that guys can kind of see we’ve got one guy going, but it’s going to take three, four guys to hit like that to break out of the slump and score some runs.”

Johnny Turek added a two-out single for the Hodags in the fifth inning.

Tuesday’s game was supposed to be the second of back-to-back games for the Hodags, but Monday’s scheduled home game against Lakeland was postponed due to wet field conditions. That game will be made up this afternoon, and could possibly turn into a doubleheader with the T-Birds. That’s dependant on if Thursday’s game at Lakeland, scheduled after press time for today’s edition, got in under a gloomy forecast.

“Thursday doesn’t look good, so if it ends up being two on Friday, we’ll have it at our place,” Waksmonski said. “That’s nice, to have a doubleheader at home. If it ends up being one there, one at our place, that’s fine too. The name of the game for Max and James (Heck) and the whole host of our staff will be to throw strikes, get ahead and limit the free passes.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].