Hays steams into quarterfinal round at NBC World Series
A history of near misses can be irrelevant to those who didn’t live through them.
The Hays Larks have never won a National Baseball Congress World Series, a meaningless statistic to their current roster – the players who helped Hays to a 7-4 win over the Northwest (Wash.) Honkers in a Tuesday pool-play game at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.
Hays, winner of both halves of the Jayhawk League season, advanced to Thursday’s single-elimination quarterfinals with a 3-0 record in its pool.
“This is one of the best summer teams I’ve played on, definitely,” said Austin Isenhart, Tuesday’s winning pitcher. “There’s no hole in our lineup, and our starting pitching and our bullpen have done a great job. We’re looking to get it done. We’ve come this far, might as well win the whole thing.”
The Larks have finished second four times in manager Frank Leo’s 36 seasons. Their most recent second-place finish happened in 2008, but Hays is often in contention.
This version of the Larks relies upon the pitching that has made them dangerous in past summers. They’ve allowed eight runs in three games and the bullpen shined on Tuesday, allowing one run in three innings.
Chad Smith entered with no outs and the bases loaded in the eighth, leading 7-2. He walked the second batter he faced to bring in a run and put the tying run at the plate. Then Smith struck out the next two batters to keep the comfortable lead.
“We have four or five guys we can go to in the bullpen,” Leo said. “The nice thing about the pool play is you have a day off so these guys aren’t worn out. You get into Thursday, Friday, Saturday, guys have to pitch every day so you have to bounce back a little bit.”
After Northwest missed a chance to score after a hit and a walk to start the game, Hays scored three in the first inning, then four in the third on two-RBI hits by Michael Burns and Austin O’Brien.
Then Hays survived the late rally by the Honkers, who also advance to the quarterfinals. They hadn’t won a game in any of their previous three years in the tournament but won their first two.
The Larks haven’t yet learned the feeling of breaking a negative narrative, but the story of the franchise isn’t told in their dugout.
“Not really talked about (but) we all kind of have it in our heads,” Isenhart said. “We’d really love to get our coaches a championship at the NBC, and I think it would be nice for them. But we just play baseball and keep it simple.”
Northwest | 000 | 030 | 010 | — | 4 7 1 | |
Hays | 304 | 000 | 00x | — | 7 12 0 |
W — Isenhart. L — Courville.
Northwest batting: Wilson 3-4, Williams 0-0, Penrod 2-3, Johnson 0-2, Lopez 1-1, Morton 1-3, Zurbrugg 0-4, Klosterboer 0-3, Acosta 0-4, Abbott 0-4, Padilla 0-4.
Hays batting: Burns 1-3, Olinger 2-5, O’Brien 3-5, Mioduszewski 2-5, Weiss 3-4, Ross 0-4, McKenzie 1-2, Boston 0-3, Redington 0-3.
Northwest pitching: Courville 2 2/3 IP-7 ER, Kast 3 1/3-0, Wange 1-0, Sheeley 1-0.
Hays pitching: Isenhart 6-3, Browning 1-1, Smith 1-0, Brown 1-0.
Haysville 10, Austin 2
Haysville | 000 | 300 | 07 | — | 10 8 1 | |
Austin | 010 | 010 | 00 | — | 2 8 1 |
W — Preiss. L — McInvale.
Haysville batting: Lambert 2-4, Groves 0-4, Soberanes 0-3, Compton 1-5, Konwinski 1-2, Garbella 1-3, Smoot 1-1, Torres 0-2, Hrinevich 0-1.
Austin batting: McPhail 3-4, Russell 1-4, Sortor 1-3, Craig 0-2, Ortega 0-2, Williams 1-3, Sepulveda 0-1, O’brien 1-2, Train 0-3, Schmidt 0-1, Hausman 1-2.
Haysville pitching: Torres 3-1, Preiss 2-1, Batton 1-0, Gregory 1-0, Gillett 1-0.
Austin pitching: McInvale 4-3, Whitehead 2-0, Russell 0.1-0, Bach 0.2-2, Brown 0-2, Silva 0-0, Polasek 1-0.
This story was originally published August 9, 2016 at 8:35 PM with the headline "Hays steams into quarterfinal round at NBC World Series."