Clutch pitching, Leo McKeon's walk-off leads to Centaurs win over Grand Forks
· Yahoo Sports
Jun. 24—BEMIDJI — Heaton Brodina isn't the most fleet-footed player on the Bemidji American Legion baseball team.
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"I'm working on it, but I'm not really (fast)," he said with a laugh.
By the ninth inning on Wednesday against Grand Forks, Bemidji needed every ounce of his speed as the winning baserunner in a 2-2 game.
After Rilan Korynta's wild pitch, Brodina slid into third and was just 90 feet away from being the game-winning run. All Leo McKeon had to do was to hit the ball in the outfield to score Brodina from third, right?
The Bemidji third baseman hit a high fly ball to center field, far enough for Brodina to tag up and head for home. He crossed home plate just before the throw to win the game, 3-2, in walk-off fashion at the BSU Baseball Field.
In a game that could've gone either way, head coach Otto Grimm is just glad his squad was on the winning end when the Centaurs didn't have their best.
"We didn't play our best baseball," he said. "Some silly mental mistakes that cost us a few runs. We kind of squeaked that one out, it was a scrappy win ... but we got the job done."
McKeon's walk-off was the first time the Centaurs threatened to score in five innings. After scoring its second run in the third inning, Bemidji went into a dry spell, not being able to string together quality at-bats against starter Ryne Richau.
Richau threw eight innings, giving up eight hits and recording only one strikeout. The day was intended to be a doubleheader, but morning showers turned the affair into one nine-inning contest.
"We saw him plenty of times; he was really efficient," Grimm said. "He was getting outs early in the count. We had a few hard hit outs, but not a ton. I don't know if it was something funny coming out of his hand or what the deal was. We couldn't seem to string together two, three, four good at-bats in a row."
The only runs off of Richau came off the bat of Gunner Ganske, who scored Kash Rasmus with a groundout in the first inning and hit an RBI single to score Kobe Brown in the third.
Post 14 couldn't hold on to a lead for too long. Grand Forks tied the game at 1-1 in the second inning and entered a stalemate after tying it again, 2-2, in the fourth.
While Bemidji's chances to score were slim until the ninth inning, Grand Forks had a plethora of scoring opportunities behind 14 total hits, but it just couldn't squeeze any more runs out of starter Lawson Berg or Brodina, who took the mound in relief. Berg pitched six innings, giving up nine hits, one earned run, a walk, and four strikeouts. Brodina pitched the final three innings, giving up five hits, two walks and recording two strikeouts.
"It seemed like we were walking the tightrope from the second inning on," Grimm said. "They always had traffic on the bases and we just kept managing to find a way out of the inning. A couple big double plays, some key strikeouts in certain spots. Guys made big plays at the right time. A lot of our mistakes on defense didn't come back to haunt us, but we just kept making big pitches each inning to get us out of those jams."
Grand Forks' best chance to take the lead was arguably in the top of the ninth inning with Brodina on the mound. With the bases loaded and only one out, Brodina produced a ground ball double play to get out of the inning unscathed.
Both Berg and Brodina didn't let the moment get to them when there were runners on base, keeping Grand Forks at bay.
"You just got to stay calm through those situations," Brodina said. "Got to trust your fielders behind you, like that double play that they had in the last inning, that was super sweet."
With the walk-off, Bemidji now has nine wins and only three losses on the young legion season, going 6-1 in its past seven games. Without the stress of the condensed spring high school baseball season, Grimm has seen his team play more loosely and freely.
Post 14 has been putting the work in, too, according to Brodina.
"(We're) working in the cage, trusting each other and just having fun out there," he said. "Just getting our work in in the summer. (And) we stay loose, we don't tense up in tough situations."
Bemidji 3, Grand Forks 2
GF 010 100 000 — 2-14-1
BEM 101 000 001 — 3-8-2
WP: Brodina (3 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 2 K)
LP: Korynta (0.2 IP, 0 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 0 K)