Tribe baseball goes hitless

MINSTER, Ohio - The hope was that the Indians had saved their offense for the tournament game. It still was not there.

Fort Recovery High School's baseball team went hitless against the New Bremen Cardinals for the second time in three nights Thursday, falling 7-0 in the Division IV sectional championship game.

New Bremen (13-10) also defeated the Indians 9-0 in a no-hitter in Midwest Athletic Conference play Tuesday. The Tribe lost 12-0 in a one-hitter Monday against St. Henry.

"Unfortunately coming into the tournament, you want to be playing your best baseball. I think we've been no-hit 20 innings in a row now," said FRHS coach Shane McKibben, whose team was looking for its fourth straight sectional title.

"We just haven't offensively made the plays."

The tone of the game was set in the first inning.

The Cardinals opened with a single and stolen base from Corey Jutte, and got a bunt single by Hank Zwiep two batters later. Clean-up hitter Spencer Rohr promptly hammered a Greg Kahlig pitch off of a shed beyond the fence in left field at Hanover Street Park for a 3-0 lead.

"Kahlig's a great pitcher. ... He threw the ball well last year and beat us," said New Bremen coach Greg Cox, whose team got shut out 4-0 by Kahlig in the 2008 sectional title game. "I really was proud of these guys for not letting that get into their heads. ... They came out and jumped on him that first inning ... It's nice as a coach when you come out in the first inning and jump up 3-0 on a home run.

"From our end, it's important for our hitting psyche. But I also think ... as a team on defense when you've got a key pitcher like that and someone jumps on him it kind of takes a little bit of wind out of your sails ..."

Andy Timmerman struck out two out of three Indian batters in a one-two-three first inning. He faced just one batter more than the minimum over the first four, and carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning.

In the final frame he got into some trouble when Frank Thien reached base on an error and Brady Kahlig and A.J. Backs drew back-to-back walks. He left the mound with the no-no in tact, but Jutte and the defense finished it off.

Jutte struck out Ryan Schoen for the first out of the inning. Nathan Keller had a chance to break it up as he ripped a line drive toward left field, but Rohr, the shortstop, snagged it and then threw to second for a game-ending double play.

"I thought we played an excellent game defensively. ... Timmerman came out and threw an excellent game," said Cox. "I thought we got some great play by our infield, and then our outfield just made some super plays."

After the three-run first inning, New Bremen added a single run in the fourth thanks to a pair of infield hits and an RBI single to right by Marcus Bergman. They tacked on three more runs with just one hit in the fifth inning, benefiting from two walks, a hit batsmen and several wild pitches and passed balls.

"It comes down to making plays. I just think they played a great game," said McKibben of the Cardinals. "They made great plays defensively. They had some timely hitting. They ran around the bases with their athletes. We just couldn't match them."[[In-content Ad]]