By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SILVERTON, Ore.– The Silverton baseball team just keeps finding ways to win ball games this season.
They entered Monday’s Mid-Willamette Conference game with Central in a three-way tie for first-place with the Panthers and Corvallis, all three with identical 4-0 league records and the first three-and-a-half innings, it was shaping up to be one of those defensive battles.
The Foxes sent out Bryson Nygren, Central sent out Jackson Barba, and the two, along with their defenses, just kept the offense from plating any runs going into the bottom half of the fourth inning.
“Props to (Barba), he went out and shoved. I trust my defense behind me. The bats were hot, the defense was locked down, I just love that,” said Nygren. “It made me more confident in myself to go out and throw strikes and score runs. They’re a good hitting team. They piece up the ball well.”
“We came in ready to play, but as soon as they hit us, punched us in the mouth, we couldn’t punch back,” adds Barba. “It was a good learning experience. We’ll learn from that and grow from that.”
In a game like this, where both teams were playing well and soundly, it was going to take one ball to find the gap or take a funny hop to possibly swing momentum into the favor of one of these two Top-10 teams in 5A.
And for the Foxes, they were the ones who were able to make the move and capitalize when they needed to. With a four-run bottom of the fourth inning that saw two hit batters and four hits, Silverton was able to take a 4-0 lead into the fifth inning. Three of the four runs came way with two outs. Two of those three runs came off of a Sawyer Enderle double before Nygren turned a quick inning into the top half of the fifth inning.
“Defensively, we’ve been sound all year, so I had full confidence in our defense, and our pitching staff has been amazing right now. Shoving guys and that fourth inning where we put up those extra runs, it’s huge for us,” said Silverton’s Sawyer Enderle. “That helped our pitching staff go in and play smoothly. It’s fun. I think everyone has that clutch factor and wants to succeed, wants to have that success.”
Nygren went on to pitch a complete game, striking out 12 and allowing three hits. Nygren and his defense kept the momentum they built during the beginning and middle parts of the game into the last two innings of the game to close out the 5-0 victory.
And though they slowed the Foxes bats to a halt after that one bad inning defensively, Central’s hoping that Wednesday will bring some more energy with the bats and avoid the lull as they did in this first game of the series against Silverton.
“We just had to gather ourselves, keep our composure. We know (Nygren) is a great pitcher. We just couldn’t get over the hump with momentum. We’re going to try to split the series on Wednesday. We just got to keep the energy throughout the whole game, we’ll try to clean it up on defensely… and get the bats going,” said Barba.
Barba struck out three batters in four innings of work. JT Giroad, Easton Herbert, and Josh Rech each had hits in the game for the Panthers, who will host the Foxes Wednesday at 5pm.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
